A Note To Our Fellow Adventurers
At RZE we've always believed the best stories of our watches are told by real users and adventurers in the field. In 2026, as we continue our story, we are dedicated to showcasing some of your stories in our Adventure Logs.
Continuing In our series, with Sam, he continues to share his experience with his UTD-8000-BK on the wrist and on location in Yosemite.
Sam Delaware is based in Los Angeles, California, directing and shooting for Sigma America, where his work puts high-performance optics through real-world use across commercial, editorial, and adventure-driven assignments.
As a former in-house producer at HiConsumption, he covered wristwatches from major manufacturers and independent makers alike, building a working familiarity with mechanical systems and design driven by function.
Follow with Sam on assignment with Vitor Rodrigues in Sierra Nevadas retracing William Henry Jackson’s surveys into the Valley in the 1870's.
- Huiy Tang, Co-Founder
October 27-30, 2025
Sigma America
Sierra Nevadas, California
A 28mm Sigma prime was passed down from my great uncle on my father’s side. He served in the Pacific during WWII, fighting off the coast of Okinawa. It came attached to a 35mm Asahi Pentax and showed its age - fog on the glass, patina on the barrel - clearly a life already well lived. His name is etched into the housing of both camera and lens. One of the most significant heirlooms I own. Sigma had only just started in the early 1960s, so he must have acquired it sometime after the war. Years later, the same company name now sits on my call sheets.
Like Colorado, the days in Yosemite were defined by weather: biting cold, warmth in direct sun, sudden cloud cover followed by sharp temperature drops, fog moving in within minutes, and granite walls that set the practical horizon and shortened the day. From a high vantage looking straight down the Valley, conditions were readable but unpredictable. Light shifted across the terrain unevenly, pockets of visibility opening and closing as clouds moved through.
This assignment had us putting one of Sigma’s zooms through its paces while loosely retracing William Henry Jackson’s surveys into the Valley in the 1870s on assignment for the USGS. Jackson worked in this same terrain with mule-strapped large-format plate cameras (some nearly two feet wide) and single, fixed lenses. Heavy gear, slow work, half craft and half chemistry. Jackson had already built a career before the USGS work, photographing landscapes and industrial sites across the country, often traveling alone and carrying everything he needed. His plates documented the West at a pivotal moment, laying the groundwork for both scientific study and public understanding back East.
The modern optics we were here to showcase would have been unimaginable to Jackson himself. Other than optics, I kept thinking about what other tools he might have carried to keep time. If anything, it would have been a brass or steel pocket watch, fully mechanical, prone to losing wind, and offering almost no protection from the elements. A fragile companion in a place like this. Jackson’s photographs helped shape the path that led to Yosemite becoming a National Park in 1890. That ethos—documenting the outdoors, understanding its fragility, preserving it—still matters. And in a small way, having a watch built to hold up in harsh places feels like its own quiet acknowledgement of the landscape he worked to protect.
For the final piece for check out the cinematic reel featuring the work of Vitor Rodrigues an adventure photographer, and some of the incredible images hosted by Sigma Photo. Follow Sam Delaware on Instagram to see more and join him on his adventures.
