Mood Shifts

A Series from the Orchard at Froggsong

Circumstances dictated that Mary Liz and I stick closer to home than usual this season. No grand expeditions or road trips seeking fall colors. While missing the opportunity to visit new and familiar  photographic hot spots, I’ve had time to mark the season’s progress closer to home.

Of the two or three nearby locations I’ve been revisiting these past weeks, one is this small, mature orchard with maybe two dozen fruit trees which I’m told is about 45 years old. It is adjacent to our friends’ Froggsong Gardens.

Specifically there are two trees in this orchard I find engaging for various reasons; reasons like the evolving colors, the shape or gesture of the branches and the relationship of these trees to their surroundings.  The ultimate force inspiring me to photograph them however, is the quality of light and the moods it creates filtering through these trees.

Typical of the soft Pacific Northwest light, conditions here are laden with atmosphere, often foggy.  With these photographs, I worked to capture variations in color and intensity of that light, and the magic it creates among the trees; the way it penetrates, sometimes glowing on the branches, then dense and seeping down to the ground beneath the canopies.

For a number of years I’ve been working in this orchard with my mind set on a collection of the four seasons. I think I’ll remember 2018 as the year I watched it in autumn.

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