Creating Reality

Anne Houde, 2019, Yellow Birch, Smuggler's Notch, Vermont

This is my favorite image of the past year. It was recently hanging in a group exhibition. Here is its story. 

We were visiting my son in Burlington, Vermont in October of 2016, and we took a drive to Smuggler’s Notch, a mountain pass near Stowe ski area. After passing views of the full glory of fall foliage around Stowe, the road winds upwards and curves tortuously as it climbs. Tractor-trailer trucks are not allowed because of the tight curves, and the road closes for the winter, depending on snowfall and snowmelt. Car-sized chunks of rock fallen from cliffs above litter the summit of the pass where there is a bit of level ground and room to park. The foliage is no longer orange and red as it was below as conifers and yellow birches replace the maples at this elevation. 

The guys hiked further up the hill while I clambered around with my camera, enjoying the fall afternoon as the sun was sinking below the mountain ridge to the northwest. I came to a spot where the large rocks created a jumbled landscape with just room to thread my way around and through them—excellent terrain for smugglers to conceal themselves and their goods. Birch trees grow in, on, and around the rocks. 

One tree in particular amazed me with its cascade of roots tumbling down the face of a rock as the trunk and branches reached above. I liked the way the trees roots and branches, the rock and the mountain behind formed triangular shapes. The sky behind was bright with the afternoon sun, and the tree was mostly in shadow. Here is the original, unedited image. I liked the composition and the contrasting colors, but the exposure is problematic, to say the least, although I managed to get everything in focus. The tree trunk and roots were in the shade and were underexposed and more flat-looking than I had envisioned.

Here’s the thing. My camera is a pretty darn smart device, and it can do many things, but no, it does not have a brain. I was there walking along, eyes on the ground not far in front of me. So my eyes were looking into shadow—not deep gloom, but open shadow—and my wide-open pupils were picking up a lot of information about textures, colors, patterns of light reflecting off of the smooth rock surfaces and smooth yellow birch bark. My eyes were adapted, for the moment, to a fairly dark environment and my mind’s eye was filling with the wonders of this small, close-in landscape. Then, when I saw “my” tree, I saw those roots and tree trunk perfectly lit in my mind, intertwined and gleaming with reflected skylight. But when I pulled out my camera and tried a few shots of just the roots, I knew I wanted to include the whole tree, the whole rock, and the distant mountain in my frame. That included a lot of bright sky. This is not a great situation for any camera, and I wasn’t using a tripod or attempting to bracket multiple exposures for HDR. So, I tried to make the picture in one shot, and hoped for the best. You can see the result—not nearly enough dynamic range, and what light there was isn’t much help.

Later, into Lightroom we went. A simple matter, I thought, to open up the shadows, show a little detail in the birch bark, reveal those roots in all their glory. Well no, without good side-lighting the image stayed flat.  I tried a lot of things, but I was not happy.

Still, this little tree stayed in the back of my mind because it resonated with me in many ways and I felt a kind of obligation to it. I tried again a year later, and yet again. Nope. Then finally in a photoshop-based class (Jim Welninski, Black and White artistry, https://alteredspacephoto.com/advanced_black_white_artistry/), I learned that you can “paint” with light and shadow and create your own vision from a photo. Yup, old-fashioned dodging and burning, but with the possibility of taking it further, creating a version of the reality you remember, or a whole new reality. I learned how to work this magic in Photoshop and voila! my vision of my tree began to come to life and I ended up with an image with more promise.

It was still not quite what I wanted though, so I started over completely, and made a better one, this time in color. Still not quite good enough.

I wondered, could I do it all in Lightroom? I started over one more time, building on insights about how to use shading and brightening to create a 3-dimensional effect and realizing I could control the color of the light and the shadows. Ultimately, I ended up with an image I was happy with and was ready to stop…for this year anyway!

Can you think of an image in your catalog that you had high hopes for, that is well composed in terms of lines and shapes, but somehow disappointed you? Can you add some light in places to improve it? (This is especially helpful for wildlife and people—a little light on the face can do wonders!) Can you complement the light with a little enhancement of shadows to create dramatic contrast and texture or to enhance the 3-D effect?