Turning A Corner

With me, as with most photographers, it’s all about catching the light. I’ve had a bit of a struggle with light this autumn … some days it’s fickle and teases me moment to moment. Some days it promises to shine brilliantly … just around the corner … but never quite does. Some days it’s glorious, but I don’t have my camera or I don’t have the time to stop and try to catch it.

Frustrating, yes, but it makes the times when I have a bit of success all the sweeter.

Out on another jaunt early one morning in October, on the hunt for Mother Nature’s brilliant golds and scarlets, I turn a corner and find that the morning light is turning a corner as well. It pours into the backyard of the Beallair Mansion, in Charles Town West Virginia, as if Mother Nature were pouring the milk into her morning breakfast cereal. It seeps into the crevices as if our whole world were nothing more than a bowl of Wheaties. If I could experience life in a time-lapse, I’m sure I’d love watching the sun filling all the architectural corners, all the blades of grass and all the leaves on the trees with life-giving light. Of course I can’t do that, but I thought this image pretty much caught the spirit of the idea. A moment in time when I think I caught the light just as it was beginning to tickle the remaining leaves on an old dogwood tree … as the season turned a corner.

This digital painting is based on a photo I took in October of 2015 with the Nikon D750 and the 24-70mm Nikkor lens. I turned it into an HDR image with Photomatix Pro, then did some fiddling in Photoshop CS6, then fully hand-painted it in Corel Painter 2015 with the Wacom tablet and stylus for a fun, semi-impressionistic-y look.

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Thanks for stopping by … and, as always, a click on the above image brings you to my website where the resolution is crisper and clearer, the watermark less obnoxious … and there are (hint, hint) oodles of cool gift ideas for those family and friends of yours who made the “nice” list this year!!!

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