Moonlight tree
- 📍 Location: Quinson, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
Last light had gone off the field and the sky had already turned deep blue overhead, but there was still a warm band low on the horizon. A thin crescent moon sat in the blue, high and to the left, and one tree stood alone against all of it.
I framed with the field as a dark mass along the bottom, the tree just right of centre, and the moon placed so it is not directly above the crown. Keeping those two apart matters — overlapped, they read as one shape; separated, the picture has two focal points and a distance between them.
The exposure is judged on the horizon glow, which leaves the ground almost black and the tree entirely silhouetted. I could have lifted the field to show the furrows. I preferred to lose them, because at that moment they genuinely were lost.
This is the short window after the sun has gone and before real night, when the sky changes measurably every minute and you have perhaps a quarter of an hour of usable frames. I like working then. There is no time to hesitate, and the decisions get simpler.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
