Weathered Streambed
Virginia

13×33″ prints are $1,500
20×50″ prints are $3,000

In 2006 Ruth and I once again went to Sherando Lake Park in Virginia while we were on a photo trip. This year we were able to get four images at the park including Sherando Sunrise. As we traveled in our camper van we brought along our two schnauzers (the van seemed to get smaller as the weeks progressed). There’s no way I would have found this image except I was taking our dog Leo out for a walk. Thank you Leo!

The overall scene is rather inauspicious. Ruth took a photo of me as I was metering the scene with my spotmeter. The weathered streambed was mostly dry and seemed devoid of photographically interesting subject matter until I looked closely at this one particular spot.

The worn shale rocks were tilted at an angle and were covered with scattered red fallen leaves. There was a slight bit of water trickling through and had collected here and there into small pools. The soft light was perfect for the scene and it was an inevitable photograph which had to be taken. I used a 3oomm lens at f/32-1/3 with a 1/2 second exposure on Velvia 50 film, using the camera’s swings and tilts to get the image into precise focus.

The image has a unique perspective in that the weathered rock with the lighting on it appears to be a section of an almost vertical rock wall. Yet the leaves are scattered about, some floating on almost invisible small pools of water.

We have a framed 20x50” Cibachrome print of this in our home. The delicate and complex beauty of this intimate glimpse into a tiny corner of nature never grows old for me as I discover something new whenever I come back to it