Forest Fulmination

For the sake of disclosure, I wanted to make a post about how unreal this image is. It absolutely did not look like the final product to begin with and because of the attention it has received, it became emergent to me to explain where it came from, how it began, and why it ended up the way that it is.

I took this photo out of the window of our car as we drove through Orchard Farm in Missouri. I had been practicing a new panning technique and my wonderful husband was indulging me by driving me all over the rural areas close to our home so that I could play with my settings and work on perfecting my craft.

The weather was unseasonably beautiful and we had all of the windows down, enjoying the breeze and the view. On this day, the sky was littered with clouds and there was absolutely no wind which created the perfect conditions for my technique and I was in heaven. It was, however, a rather dreary day in my mind and it was difficult to shake it. This year, on August 12th, I celebrated my first birthday without my mother and it was bittersweet to say the least. We were actually driving around as a result of having to bomb our house because, while celebrating in Hawn State Park, we picked up some ticks and there were so many that we ended up with an actual infestation and had to bomb our house to get rid of them. Normally, this would be devastating but it has been my luck that every year on my birthday, something goes wrong and we initially thought we escaped that this year until the ticks started presenting themselves.

In my mind, my birthday was still fresh and being without my mom was strange and heartbreaking.

When I sat down to visit these images, she was still on my mind and in an effort to express the storm I was feeling inside, I wanted to create something that brought it out of my head and onto a different medium. I am by absolutely no means an artist that is capable of drawing, painting, or doing anything other than photography so I decided to try my hand at composites and a truly surreal edit. Interestingly, the real image was this:

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To me, this image is washed out, uneventful, and would normally go into the recycle bin on my desktop.

On this day, however, I felt the need to save it; to rescue it. We both were rather drab and I felt that this image was truly capable of being something extraordinary and so I went at it.

The next hour was full of experimentation as I tried my best to bring the details back and make this middle-of-the-afternoon image into a nightscape with a storm akin to what I was experiencing within myself. As I transformed this image, I could feel my own storm dispersing and it physically felt like weight was slowly dropping from my shoulders. Once the image was complete, it felt as though I had let out all of my sadness out on a metaphorical canvas and I was ready to move on and experience a good day. 

I have always been, and will always be, a huge advocate for using art as an emotional outlet and as a form of expression. There is so much more to a painting, a sketch, or photograph than meets the eye and because I love hearing stories of art inspiration, I wanted to share mine.