Four Peaks, snow, saguaros; hot and cold in one. A description of Arizona compressed in one 300mm/2.8, 1000 ISO frame.
In one frame you see the warmth generated by the colors in the frame. In another there is a sense of puffy softness to the saguaro, like a stuffed animal, maybe, and an otherworldly color to it, with a cold, cobalt sky behind the mountains, suggesting a more accurate coldness of the time of year that the image was made.
The deep shadows, the distant, tangled, prickly forest makes it an image to linger inside.
I made the image at dusk, or perhaps even darker than dusk, with a higher ISO that adds a grainy grittiness that usually feels out of place to me in a landscape of beauty, pattern and comfortable light. There’s a smoothness and an uplift that, like with a song filled with major chords, overcomes the grit that, in my mind, suggests an imperfection of execution, some perceived shortcoming of technical practice.
The grit fits.
It serves more as an expressive reminder that amid this explosion of visual notes in the higher register of the scale, the warm, glowing, fuzzy leafless giants preside over the hardened, bristling, rocky substrate of the desert. It’s a reminder that this inviting, comfortable colorful fuzz is actually a tough, sharp, perforating defense against forge-like heat that sears its skin against further assault.
It’s also a sort of illustrator of the that these centenarians struggle against every storm and every parched period that seek to contradict and topple their strength in an often unforgiving and unwelcoming environment.
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