PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: A photographer friend once lamented to me not having found her, "Lone-Tree-on-a-Hillside" shot, and I thought to myself, I've shot mine, and it was true even though nobody had seen it but me. I'd shot it, but each time I tried to render it, the finished image fell short of what I thought it could be.
I shot this photograph in May of 2008. The tree used to stand across from Hanover Hill Farm, but the tree fell long before the barns burned. I had noticed the tree before the afternoon when it caught the breaking storm clouds. I set the image aside for further work as soon as I reviewed the day's shoot. It was not long after that when the tree fell. It's been on the workbench since while the landscape of which it was a part has vanished forever.
Of course, one can have more than a single, "Lone Tree," shot, but I've met more than one photographer who believed every serious shooter should have at least one. Classically, it is an exercise in cloud photography, at least once one has found the lone tree and the hillside.
