SkyWatch Friday - Summer is to Far Away - Quote - Paul Gauguin - Magical Harmony

IMG3984B - Summer is to Far Away

Quote: "A given arrangement of colors, lights and shadows produces an impression. This is what we might call the music of painting. Often you are seized by the magical harmony before you even know what the subject of a painting is, as when you enter a cathedral and you are to far away from the painting to make it out clearly." ~ Paul Garguin

My intuition said, "Shoot this." And so I did. The image was filled with chaos. Patterns, forms, color shouted from every corner of the picture. Look at me! Look at me! I felt overwhelmed with what existed. I focused on one thing and changed the color image to sepia. And out of this action came unadorned beauty.

This shot was taken in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, May, 2008. I saw this lonely dead tree standing there among trees of every green color in the universe. Friday, I was looking at old files and wondered delete or keep this tree image. Perhaps if I worked with the picture, the ordinary could become extraordinary. So the process began. I cropped out everything, but the tree. Then I changed it from color to sepia. I didn’t think it popped enough. So, then I tried using different colors for a background and discovered that now it had the desired effect. Here is the finished result.