Cascading Maple and Rain
West Virginia

20×20″ prints are $1,500
30×30″ prints are $3,000

Ruth and I traveled to the Appalachian Mountains in our camper van to photograph in the spring of 2000. On this day we were traversing some of the very mountainous areas of West Virginia. There was light rain falling creating a misty atmosphere, seemingly not very conducive for landscape photography.

We came around a corner and I saw this tree, Ruth pulled the van over and parked. The rain had stopped for a moment so I set up my Hasselblad with my 250 Superachromat lens and took one photograph on Provia film.

The tonalities of the scene are soft in contrast to the bold black silhouette of the branches. This is one of my images which has three visual layers that interact with each other. The soft, dreamlike background, the stark black branches and the patterns of the golden blossoms on the tree.

When I’m composing a layered image I do it intuitively, finding the right spot where the layers interact in the best way. In this case the branches and blossoms were fixed so I couldn’t change that but I was able to place the background shapes and colors in the best position for the composition.

The Cibachrome prints convey the feeling of the soft light and gentle rain which was falling on that peaceful scene. The framework of the black branches gives the image an almost stained glass quality.