EMMETT SPARLING 🌎 TRAVEL
Story time 👇 I went to Nusa Penida’s famous Kelingking Beach twice in the same week back in 2020, just before the pandemic. It was during that weird time when lockdowns hadn’t fully started, but Indonesia was already sending travellers from certain countries home. The first trip was stunning—we played in the waves at sunset as golden ocean mist lit up the beach, and I got some epic shots of @meganhassa. A few days later, I returned with @josiahwg, @bryanhynes, and @sashajuliard to camp overnight. Sasha rented a tent and stove in Denpasar for $3, Josiah got food, and Bryan and I brought water. If you’ve been to Kelingking, you know that the steep hike down to the beach means leaving is a huge effort. While we setup camp, Sasha crashed his drone into the cliff, so he and Bryan went on a retrieval mission while Josiah and I stayed behind. That’s when we realized two things: Josiah had forgotten all the food except Oreos and a single pack of instant noodles, and about 30 hungry monkeys—deprived of their usual tourist handouts—were charging down toward us. We stood waist-deep in the ocean, watching helplessly as our camp turned into a monkey yard sale. If we tried to leave the water, they snarled, ready to attack. About 20 minutes later, Bryan and Sasha returned— I can’t remember if they got the drone—but the monkeys scattered into the jungle, disappointed with our lack of food. They took our Oreos, but at least we still had our increasingly precious noodles. As the sun set, things felt good. We had a fire, our tent was set up, and the entire beach to ourselves. Then we saw the lightning… A tropical storm rolled in fast, drenching everything. Our tent was too small for 4 grown men, so Bryan rigged a tarp while Sasha attempted to cook. Sand stuck to every surface, we were soaked, starving, and had no sleeping mats. I remember lying in the tent—sweating, drenched, covered in sand—and just laughing at how hilariously chaotic the whole thing had become. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Adventures like this make the best stories, and doing it with friends makes them even better.
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Comments
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03-09
I love when life throws things at you that you could hardly even try to make up
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👏🔥🙌😮🤩💯
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03-09
Well, it makes for a great story even if your adventure didn’t turn out quite as expected. Sometimes that’s the fun part - although it may not seem that way when you’re in the thick of it. LOL
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🌹
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I love the story! Awesome adventure but it must have been exhausting in the moment 😂
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🔥🔥👏
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😍😍
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😍
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The light is so beautiful
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03-09
The story behind images definitely worth telling. That must been a wild experienced! 🔥
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What a fun story and memories!
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Chaos makes for the best memories ❤️
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The lighting is magnificent.
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🔥🔥
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03-09
The First 3 Fotos are so awesome. Great work man.
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Ansel Adams Photographer, Artist & Activist
*Happy Birthday to Ansel’s ‘Monolith’!* 🏞️ “Born” on this day, April 10, 1927. Andrea Stillman’s biography “Looking at Ansel Adams” includes a wonderful chapter all about this storied photograph: “In 1992 I was in Ansel’s workroom selecting images for a prospective book of his photographs when Virginia appeared and announced that she had found a stash of home movies from the late 1920s and 1930S. With anticipation we rented a movie projector to screen them. Miraculously, one reel included footage of the trek to the Diving Board. It showed Ansel in his favorite plus fours, lugging his forty-pound pack, with a rakish fedora hat and the Keds high-top basketball shoes he favored for hiking. “The climbers struggled up…in deep snow, and when they reached the Diving Board they pulled each other up with a ludicrously thin rope. Virginia fearlessly inched out onto the sharply angled granite spur, and when she reached the tip she stood up and blithely waved. It seems appropriate that Ansel presented the very first print of ‘Monolith’ to Virginia. “Ansel was twenty-five years old when he made ‘Monolith.’ At age eighty he was able to recall the experience of making the negative, every detail as clear as it more than a half century had not elapsed. He photographed Half Dome hundreds of times, and there are many different interpretations that include moons, clouds, snow, flowers, leaves, trees, even deer and people. In 1978, during one of his last annual Yosemite workshops, he and his photographic assistant, John Sexton, contemplated Half Dome together and talked about the taking of ‘Monolith’ in 1927. According to John, Ansel laughingly confided, ‘Maybe I should just have stopped then.’” Text, film footage and Ansel Adams images are copyright ©️The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. All rights reserved. John Sexton’s photograph courtesy of @johnsextonphoto. All rights reserved.