Inspiration, a Trip, and a Mistake

“It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

– Jean-Luc Godard

Sometime, shortly after midnight, I woke up with a mind full of thoughts.  These thoughts made going back to sleep impossible.  Rather than staring at the ceiling,

I made my way to the computer and pulled up my Lightroom Catalog.  There I perused some recent fall images that did not get processsed in my first pass.

There was one image, a mistake, that I kept coming back to for some reason.  Normally, I would have deleted the image, but something about it intrigued me.

First, I attempted to combine this image with some of my other fall scenes using Photoshop, but nothing appealed to me.

After playing with that image for a while, I turned to another image.   I liked it for the colors, yet was not pleased enough with it as a stand alone image.

I was drawn to this scene, taken two weeks ago on the Blue Ridge Parkway, by the amazing mix of colors.  I took it on a diagonal after listening to three hours of presentations by Keith Carter, one of my favorite photographers.  In his presentations, he described some of his processes.

I decided to combine my photo inspired by Keith Carter with my mistake to create an image.

I took the base image of the trees photographed on a diagonal and made a duplicate layer of it in Photoshop.  After that, I added a motion blur to the duplicated layer.  I then masked off the parts I wanted to show from the original, base image.

The quote I found this morning from American film director, Jim Jarmusch, summed up perfectly the process that led to my final image:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.”

-Jim Jarmusch

Many thanks to those who asked how I created this image.  It all started with inspiration from another photographer who I greatly admire, a trip with a great friend to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a mistake!