This image goes back a long long long way. Over a decade ago perhaps? I’m not really sure. I am at that age where everything seems like it was “ten years ago” when really it was probably a lot longer than that.
The image was made on a day trip out to the Oregon Badlands which are just outside of Bend more toward the center of the state. Oregon is a funny place in that on the west side of the Cascade Mountains it is green and damp and rains a lot but on the east side of the Cascade Mountains it feels more like a desert, or at the very least like the grand plains that one sees in an old western film. The trees become brittle and dry, the ground dusty, and the light harsh and intense.
It can be quite a change for a photographer who is used to overcast skies and more or less perpetual doom and gloom.
Still, change can be a very good thing and it is always fun to exercise the creative brain with new location and new situations. Due to the fact that the light was very bright and the sun more or less straight overhead, I exposed my roll of Fomapan 100 back to ISO 50 in an attempt not to blow out the highlights. I succeeded with this particular image, but not for most of the roll.
I still consider one image out of a roll of twelve to be a victory though.