Since last summer I have driven to Texas twice and back once, scores of photo opportunities were within reach. The gnarly trees so common to the “hill country” on the outskirts of Austin where my oldest son and family moved last summer have long fascinated me. These smaller oaks are some variation of larger Live Oaks that I later planned to visit as we drove through Louisiana and New Orleans on our return home. 

   My wonderful daughter-in-law would often ask, “what exactly are you looking for with these trees”. I would explain, these type of random shapes are very interesting, however, I need to “separate” them from the background. I would explain humans have the ability to see in a 3rd dimension. Where as a piece of flat art, be it a photograph, or painting must rely on spatial relationships and light to provide some-type of perceived depth and dimension. In a piece of flat-art these wonderfully shaped trees would simply merge with the background, effectively losing all sense of their individual shape and depth in the image. These shapely trees are everywhere, but tend to clump in groves, that in itself is difficult to begin and end a composition. Particularly when my charge is to always use the maximum square inches of film and rarely rely on cropping an image to reduce unwanted parts of a scene.

     The approach I take to composing an image is like assembling a huge puzzle. Access to the appropriate vantage point, wind and weather, time to set-up and the ability to carry focus with the huge lens necessary for very large film. These become the first pieces in that puzzle for creating the images I choose. Many times what my mind sees and imagines in an instant is simply not possible with the constraints I work with. Most times there is some-type of concession in making a large film image. Case in point, I purposefully left the film’s “notch-code” and clear film “rebate” which shows as black surrounding this month’s image, it is an indicator of the very edge of the film where the image begins or ends. So, in composing the image, I select the grouping of trees and their position in the composition dictates the lens and height that I choose to setup the tripod. I am bound by the 5″x12″ format of the film, so, with the side-to-side composition in place I now have to balance what is in the top and bottom of the image. The sky is of no importance to me while the sunlit grass is essentially what will separate the trees in front of and behind a secondary line of trees. Truth told I don’t need as much of the foreground grasses but compromise because I want even less of the sky in the final image. As I look at the final image I do believe the extra foreground does offer a sense of the trees being somewhat farther away, offering yet another subtle sense of dimension to the piece of flat art.

     This is where the story goes off on a different, but related tangent. Some years ago I read the book The Net and the Butterfly in an effort to gain an understanding of how the creative mind works. I had always thought really creative people were simply gifted by a higher power. I would clearly learn there are ways to engage in creativity once it’s known where it’s hiding. Turns out creativity can be a by-product of day-dreaming, that was easily my best subject in high school so my hopes were heighten! The book goes into great detail extolling historical references of great discoveries. From Archimedes, Thomas Edison, the man who solved the Siri algorithm and even the bizarre story about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Turns out Richards suddenly awoke in the middle of the night, turned on a tape recorder and picked up his guitar and played a simple, 3 note guitar chord and said the words, Can’t Get No Satisfaction. In the morning he turns on the tape recorder having no memory of waking up much less playing the guitar. Those 3 notes are arguably the greatest guitar riff in Rock & Roll music.

     The book explains the two different networks in our brain and how they affect everyday function. The Executive Network is where ordinary mundane everyday tasks are implemented, daily assignments at work, grocery shopping, paying the bills, anytime the mind is engaged in completing a task. The Default Network only becomes active when the mind starts to drift off, sometimes to sleep, other times with mindless tasks such as showering and even driving a car. Actions that are so second nature we don’t even know we are doing them. Such as the important discovery by Archimedes, the famous Greek mathematician from 250 years before Christ. He had been trying to devise a formula on how to accurately measure the volume of an irregular shaped object with no success. One night preparing for a bath, he stepped into the water and suddenly realized the amount of water that his foot had displaced could be measured exactly. How does this relate to this month’s photograph you may wonder?

     All alone, I’m driving along a back road towards Pedernales State Park at the suggestion of a good friend and fine large format photographer himself Michael Wellman from Texas. Rarely do I make photographs during a time of day when the sun is high in the sky as it was here about 2:15pm. I’m looking on each side of the deserted road for photographs in early or late light to return another day. I drive by the stand of trees seen here and noted the shapes were appealing. By the time I had driven another 1/2 mile it dawned on me the sun lit grasses in front of, and also behind that stand of trees would indeed provide the separation of the trees from the background that was tucked away in my mind. While my image won’t ever have a historical value, the route that my mind took to arrive at a means for a successful photograph of these wonderful trees is clearly my biggest take-away !!