A year ago I wandered into Soames forest near Gibsons and felt into the energy of the tall fir and cedar trees as I meandered along its many pathways. This was not the first time I had felt into the silence of the forest. The forest had been my place of meditation for many years but today was different. I had taken thousands of photographs of the forest but no longer had the desire to take another forest photo. I had covered the subject from every angle possible. This morning, however, I wanted to capture something unique. Somehow I wished to express the energy of the forest. The question was how to do this? Energy is invisible to most but a few who can “see” it. Energy is the inherent life force of everything that exists. I can feel it, but taking a photograph of that essence is a different story. I have had a sense of invisible forces living in the forest but could I photograph them? That had become my desire.
I was intrigued. How to begin?
Something made me move the camera during a long exposure or zoom in or out during a 10 second exposure as well as let the camera freely move this way or that. I allowed my intuition to determine how this would happen and got out of my way. This was not a time for thinking.
What would happen?
I began to experiment to find out. After taking a long walk and shooting a number of frames I headed home to see what would show up on the computer monitor. There I played with colour settings in Lightroom to manipulate and improve the raw image. With the aid of technology the images came alive. The forest was displayed in a way that I had never seen before. The unseen had become visible.
