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As I was driving in southern Colorado, I stopped at a beautiful spot
near the road. I parked underneath a grove of large Cottonwood trees
near a mountain river. The sun was beginning to rise high in the sky—it
was around 11:00 am, and the day was starting to get quite warm, after
heavy frost the night before. I spent most of an hour admiring the trees and the blue mountainside
which was behind them. There was a light breeze which came and went,
so I explored the area using my Hasselblad. The trees were at the bottom
of a very narrow, steep canyon, so there was a substantial amount of
reflected fill light illuminating the shaded sides of the trunks—even
allowing for the rather severe backlighting of the golden yellow leaves. I only photographed the trees from one or two positions but because
of the wind, and the accompanying uncertainty as to the degree of subject
motion, I took about 4 or 5 photographs of each view. I always try to
anticipate the motion of the wind and simultaneously study all of the
small branchlets in the photograph but it is always hard to be certain
that everything remained still during the exposure—especially since
I always pre-release the mirror, which then blacks out the view through
the lens. It is usually necessary to wait for the back-and-forth motion
of the branches to pause between the cycles of their oscillations to
find the optimum moment for the exposure. The dark, strong graphic forms of the trunks work with the bright yellow leaves to give a feeling of luminosity and rejoicing. |
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