Alone Together

Posted on June 29, 2011 | 10 comments

On my way across Mount Rogers Sunday morning I couldn’t help be notice the number of bare tree trunks that dotted the landscape. Most are either dead or dying and have obvious signs of lightning strikes. I didn’t think much of them on the way up but on my way back down the cloud cover had began to darken and made them stand out quite a bit more against the sky.

I stopped at a spot surrounded by several of these trees to grab a snack and began to scope out the scene around me composing frames in my mind. This particular image was taken facing west and the approaching storm. These two trees trunks, standing alone but together against a stormy sky, seemed to strike a chord with me. I opted to back off a little and use a wider angle to try and convey a sense of loneliness but still keep them as the obvious subjects.

The lighting on the mountainside was very strange all day with the clouds diffusing it but the blue-green fir tress and the bright green undergrowth reflecting a strange hue over everything. While taking the shots in this area I was already thinking that I wanted to process them as black and white. Monochrome is something that I don’t do a lot because I admittedly have trouble judging contrast in grayscale. These scenes had many different levels of brightness and contrast so they almost made themselves.

About that stormy sky…less than 15 minutes after taking this image I found myself in the middle of heavy downpour, 30 mph winds and still 3 miles from my car. Thank goodness for the weather shield on my Lowepro SlingShot!

Camera settings: Canon 60D, Canon EF-S 18-135mm Lens, 28mm, ISO100, f/16, 3-brackets

Processing: Adobe Lightroom 3, Photomatix Pro