Adventures from Behind the Glass

Lone Tree, Davie, FL 2012

To celebrate the first day of Spring I wanted to create a new image that would exhibit the bright colors of the season, which begins March 20th. To that end, this weekend we explored a local park that although it had been around for years, I had never been inside.

I have often mentioned here, my photographic frustration with South Florida’s virtually flat topography. You have to drive north to Winter Park, outside of Orlando before you start seeing varying elevations. So it is an unusual experience to find a South Florida park with (large) rolling hills. In order to accomplish this, the Parks and Recreation Department (Leslie Nopes would be proud) covered the local landfill with grass and punctuated the top with an occasional tree (Broward County’s Vista View Park http://bit.ly/GAPt30). Shooting a (Canon L) 400 mm lens from atop one hill across to another, I isolated one of those trees against a magnificent sky full of clouds. Utilizing a circular polarizer or graduated neutral density filter brings out the deep blue of the sky. The exaggerated use of negative space makes for a dynamic composition emphasizing the concept of…one.