Juniper and Cottonwood

As I was turning forty, some of the predictable issues of midlife started rumbling insistently. Instead of a fast car, I went in the opposite direction: I bought an old-fashioned, cumbersome 4"x5" view camera, built a darkroom in my basement, and took a week’s trip to New Mexico with the camera and a backpack.

First week with this new camera, I was cruising down a two-lane road near El Rito when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark green juniper in front of a cottonwood whose leaves had turned intense yellow. I hit the brakes, pulled over, and moved with the unfamiliar deliberation this camera required. Found the position where the trunk of one tree obscured the other; one leg of the tripod on a culvert and two on the road embankment; put on a red filter to darken the sky and highlight the cottonwood leaves; focused with my head under a cloth while trying not to slide down the embankment.

Only when I got to the darkroom did I realize that the film had captured more than I had seen; textures and contrast of the two trees holding light and dark energies, in tension and in balance, both threatening and prevailing. Printing the image required deliberation as well, adjusting brightness and contrast of each part of the image to harmonize with the emotions that flowed; diminishing elements that distracted from that feeling. 

The images from that week (which includes Stone Lions) were a new experience of doing photography. This trip marked the evolution of my eye - from snapshots into something both more spontaneous and more deliberate. The excitement of a new camera soon gave way to the awareness of how small or peripheral noticings may, when attended to with care, become a path to a much more expansive view.