P.S. The link above doesn’t work now, but this one does: http://www.butzi.net/sales.htm

Sure it’s for sale. Prices are on my website at http://www.butzi.net/sales.htm.

Prices vary by size, from a 5″x6″ print for $40 to $2500 for a 40″x50″ print.

Is it for sale? How much does it cost? Are there size options? Something in the price range an artist could afford?

Um, sure.

I was down in the valley below my home; it was a cold morning and the tendency on mornings like that is that the cold air is trapped in the valley by the hills to the east and west, and the result is often a thick, wet fog like this. A light breeze was causing variations in the density of the fog, and the sun was alternately completely obscured and partly revealed. At the same time, the fog near the ground was more or less uniform density and caused the usual fog/contrast effects you see in the trees.

The goal at exposure time was to arrange those elements, along with the graphic elements of the shallow rise in the foreground and the paved pathway with puddles, into some cohesive composition. I would have liked to have the road start left of center of the lower edge of the frame, but there was no way to get that composition and preserve the relation of the sun to the trees; in the end, the sun position was more important. There were several compositions possible from a viewpoint to the right with the sun to the right of the tallest tree but there were balance problems and the shift in the position of the shallow rise also caused problems. As always, compromises were made. Bear in mind that the sun actually moves; I recall waiting a bit after making the big compositional decisions so that the sun would fall where it does in this frame.

The camera was a 4×5 view camera; I used rear tilt to emphasize the convergence of the edges of the path, since I couldn’t get the angular path I really wanted I was concerned about getting a sense of depth. Since the sun was varying in brightness due to changing fog densities, I made a series of exposures and picked the one that had the best separation of the sun’s disk from the background.

The 4×5 negative was scanned and the version of the photo you see was constructed in Photoshop. My recollection is that what you’re looking at is the result of about 3 days of making head sized dents in the walls, trying to a) get the sun to separate convincingly from the foggy sky, b) get the density of the sky to ‘read’ as fog, c) getting the contrast to fade the right way as a depth cue, d) adjusting the foreground shading to depth cue properly.

Most of the head banging was trying to get the sun to read as ‘bright’ without being forced to depress the sky values around it. A certain amount of jiggery-pokery was done with reversing the tonal gradient near the sun to get it to ‘pop’ a bit. This is less successful in this small version but much more persuasive in the much larger (e.g. 16″x20″) final print. There’s some minor fussing with the paved path to get it to separate from the wet grass and to make the puddle stand out a bit.

This was one of the first images I printed on a matte surface paper and the result was that it was a bit more of ‘yet another god-damn learning experience’ than might otherwise be the case, because I was learning to adjust to the new medium at the same time I was building the interpretation you see.

Could you say a bit about this wonderful landscape photograph, or point to a place where you discuss it further?