Photos of Opportunity

There's a tree up by the airport, an incredibly old and massive oak, that I've wanted to photograph for quite some time. When they did all the recent road construction up there, they were careful to preserve the tree, remarkably enough - for nearly a year, it was surrounded by one of those blaze-orange fences construction crews sometimes put up.

On my way home for Christmas, I decided to head out past the airport. I had the camera in the back of the car, of course, and just as I neared the oak I realized I'd come at precisely the time of day at which I had previously determined the oak would be best lit. It had rained all day, and only just cleared up - it was a perfect opportunity.



So I pulled over and spent a good ten minutes walking around snapping pictures of the tree. Framing it was hard: I wanted to be back away from it, so the viewer would get a good feel for its size, but at the same time, I wanted it to fill the frame as much as possible. And there are towers behind it with racks of lights on them to help pilots line up with the runway during night landings - I could only do some much to cut them out in the framing. Later, I'll see what I can do in Photoshop to clean them up: I really want the tree all by itself.

And then, before I went back to the car, I turned around and saw the fog and clouds framing the mountains.