1988 – Mark Zanzig poses with a serious look near Foia Mountain in Portugal. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: S. Meß
The story behind the image
1988. I was 22 years old. I owned little more than a white Mercedes Benz 200D which had been manufactured in 1979 and had served as a taxi for more than 500,000 kilometers before I purchased it in 1988.
It turned out to be the car that brought me and my girlfriend safely from Kiel in Northern Germany to the Algarve in Southern Portugal (and back!) – a trip of of roughly 3,000 kilometers (one wa.). We took six weeks to explore the region.
One day we escaped the coastal heat and drove up to Foia Mountain. At 902 meters above sea level, it’s the highest mountain at the Algarve. The drive from Portimão was a relief already as the road meandered gently through the woods of the cool and shady Serra de Monchique. At some point we left the tree zone and approach the top.
Near the top of the mountain, I posed for my girlfriend in the midday sun (a bad idea) trying a serious look (another bad idea.)
When I scanned the negatives of that trip I realized that this piece of film had been damaged during processing in 1988. It was held togerther just by transparent sticky tape and never got developed as a print. So last weekend I took the time to recover the shot.
Here’s the original scan:
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | Summer 1988 |
| Location | N266-3, near Miradouro da Foia, Portugal |
| Camera | Canon AE-1 Program |
| Image Source | Negative Film |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 6698 x 4353 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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