Revisiting a Memorable Moment

It is amazing what a difference a few years makes. Photography, like any craft or art, is a growth. Look at the works of any famous photographer, painter, or musician and you will see history remembers them in phases.

And while I don't dare compare myself to the greats, I can still see huge evolution in my own photography. I spend more time looking at the light, looking for 'moments' and waiting for something special than I did before. I have a better understanding of the capabilities of my cameras and how to generate incredible results from them. And I have a more refined understanding of light.

All of this translates in my photographs, and I recently revisited a place where I took a photograph that was very special to me and attempted to elevate it. 

The location? Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. In 2013, I visited the park and made a photograph that would later win the honors for the 2014 Vincent Versace Award for Photographic Excellence. As a result, that location has been a special spot for me, but I had not been back since. I recently felt like I had grown enough as a photographer to revisit the location and wanted to see what sort of image I could create now. This is the result.

In a future blog post I'll break down this photograph and deconstruct making it - because it is actually a panorama of five images that took nearly 30 minutes of on-scene shooting with my Leica SL to create. Everything in the image is authentic - including the swirl of water - and required the full extent of my photographic know-how to accomplish. I'm very proud of the revised image, and hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.