Pastel Aralia
North Carolina

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

While traveling through the Appalachia mountains, I found a grove of this most unusual plant. They plants were growing near a stream, in a shady mountain valley. When I first spotted them, I knew they had potential for a very interesting photograph.

I needed to use my Hasselblad camera, as the branches were very susceptible to even the slightest breeze. Over a two hour period, I waited for the branches to pause in their wind-induced motion, exposing about 16 transparencies to insure that one would be motion-free. I used my Zeiss 250mm Superachromat, one of the only lenses in the world which has no chromatic aberration and is also one of the sharpest lenses for the Hasselblad. I believe that the extreme color fidelity of this lens helps this image, as every subtle nuance and pastel color is faithfully rendered.

I consider this photograph to be one of my most original and creative images and I hope it is a harbinger of many great things to come. It still provides me with a great deal of upliftment every time I see it. To me, it remains a constant reminder of a powerful image clearly seen and felt in a moment of inspiration. It brings to mind swirling, exuberant feelings about the flow of life throughout the world and is a reminder to me of how all things are part of a unified whole, even those things which can oftentimes seem chaotic and somewhat random.