Pine flare
- 📍 Location: Les Petites Rivières, Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
I pointed the camera straight into the sun, which is the one thing you are taught not to do. The pine stands almost in the centre, its trunk splitting the light, and the sun sits low enough to burn through at the base of the branches rather than above them.
Closing the aperture right down turns that burn into a star with clean rays, and it also drags a chain of soft discs across the lower half of the frame. I could have cloned them out. I left them, because they are the honest trace of light passing through glass, and removing them would have made the picture smoother and less true.
The sky was streaked with high cirrus that evening, catching the last warmth while the ground had already gone to shadow. That split is the composition: a luminous upper half, a dark lower half, and one tree standing across the join to hold the two together.
This is an ordinary park, walked by hundreds of people every day. I came back to it for weeks before the sun finally sat in the right place. There is a particular satisfaction in finding a picture where nobody thinks to look for one, and that evening I walked away knowing I had it.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
