Hey friends!
If you happened to catch my Five Favorite Pictures from 2020 post (and if you missed it, take a second and go have a look!) you’ve seen this picture before, but this week I’m going to take a minute to talk about the image itself, and what’s coming in the next several weeks on Picture of the Week.
In my 5 Favorites post, I eluded to a project I was starting this winter that I called my color sabbatical. The idea was this, with the exception of some night images I already had planned and family Christmas pictures, I was going to shoot exclusively in black and white from Dec 1 – Mar 1. The reasoning for this was simple – I wanted to get better at shooting black and white, and what better way than to force myself to shoot black and white for an entire season. Additionally, I rarely capture images in the winter that I love, so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose anyway, and the project would give me motivation to keep shooting through the winter. Wouldn’t you know it, time spent behind the camera yielded images that I genuinely like! It’s as if, if you try harder, you might actually succeed! 🙂 I actually have more images that I like than I’ll end up sharing, which for me, is really a testament to how much I ended up enjoying the time. Typically I’m stock piling images ahead of winter so I’ll have enough content to get me through to spring, but this year I’m culling images I like just so I’m not camped out on one thing too long!
For this first image, I didn’t have to go too far. This tree is literally right beside my house. In the lead up to my color sabbatical, I was admittedly a bit nervous to such a commitment, so I thought I’d give it a test drive first. I was blessed with this amazing scene one morning while I was out experimenting in the yard, and that set the hook, so to speak. This image ended up being one of my favorites from 2020, even ahead of my Dec 1 start date, which got me really excited about the project.
I’ll talk more in the coming weeks about what I learned, but for now, I hope you enjoy what I created!
–Dan Thompson