the scene & the moment

“To isolate any tree imbues it with stateliness and nobility.” Charlie Waite in Landscape: The Story of 50 Favorite Photographs

We passed this spot while we were on our way to eat with my wife’s family a couple of weeks ago. Several trees out in the field caught my eye and I immediately imagined a photograph made later in the day, at last light, with the bare branches silhouetted against a clear sky as if they were etched upon it. It was only when I returned to the spot this past weekend that I realized I’d be able to arrange a composition that included Longs Peak… so getting my favorite 14er in the shot turned out to be an unexpected, but very welcome, bonus.

One of the things I enjoy about photography is how we, as photographers, are able to not only capture a scene, but capture a moment… and, more than that, help shape the scene & moment that are preserved in our image.

The time of day we choose to photograph a scene helps shape the image we capture. I got this shot at sunset, and this would have been a totally different photograph at any other time of the day, in different light.

The season in which we choose to photograph a scene helps shape the image we capture. I love the stark, bare branches of the tree silhouetted against the empty sky in this image. If I’d taken this shot in summer, with the branches full of leaves, this would be a totally different shot.

How we choose to compose a shot helps shape the scene we capture. I chose to isolate this tree in the frame, along with Longs Peak, so that it’d be a very simple composition. There were other trees just out-of-frame to the left and right, and a barbed wire fence immediately in front of me, but this photo is simply about a tree and a mountain, captured in a moment of time.

Of course, there are other factors/tools/choices that can help shape the nature of the image we capture: things like the lens we choose to use, or our choice of aperture or shutter speed or focus or filters. Any post-processing & editing we do once we have the shot opened up on the computer is important, too.

To me, when you get right down to it, photography is about Being There, about capturing an interesting scene in an unrepeatable, unique moment of time. As landscape photographers, we of course have to work with the raw material which nature gives us, but that we can help shape the scene & the moment we capture is, to me, very cool and very humbling.

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich