“Hints of colour on crisp winter days inspire me to look for more, to imagine the world alight with brightness” – Ed Lehming

I’ve found myself stretching and experimenting with my photos lately, not satisfied with the image, “as-is” but wanting to expand it, to glean more than the base photo offers me. I’m taking the bright elements of the photo; the bright birch bark, the warm orange and copper of the beech leaves, and the glow of the background sky and extracting something altogether new from those hints of colour.

What’s driving this desire lately is a desire to bring beauty into a world caught in the complex emotions of social isolation as the COVID 19 pandemic still holds the world around me in its grip. I find the news filled with depressing news of ‘worst-case scenarios. For my own mental health, I need to create beauty, and if it means taking some small hints of colour and expanding them into something more, then that is what I will do.

My intention, over the next few days and weeks is to create a themed collection of enhanced images that are informed by these bright colours, to fill my world with brightness that I can immerse myself in and, hopefully, bring that brightness to others along the way.

I titled this image “Structure” because of the way the background foliage seems to hang on the framework of the birch tree. I’ve taken some liberties in converting the normally green pine boughs to an orange palette to keep the look and feel of this series similar.

iPhone 12 Pro @ 4.2 mm
1/3500 sec, f/1.6, ISO 32