Each to their own time. As we are born, and die, and our parts rejoin the earth…a fallen sequoia rests in the forest unaffected, for generations …affording a humble view of our own mortality.

– Photo from YOSEMITE-CATCHING THE LIGHT, Copyright 2011 by Wilson Wyatt Jr.  (Click on image for full size)

This image presented unique photographic challenges.  I wanted to capture the “feeling” I had in the Mariposa Grove of sequoias, in a cold June rain, as a small being among these giants that have endured three generations of “guests” in the forest.  So, Time was one quality to capture.  Lighting was another issue.  How does a photographer render the many shades of “black” in the tangled ancient roots from this tree…a root ball almost three stories tall…while capturing the array of greens from the moss and surrounding forest, without the image being “blown out” by the sky? I also wanted the image to portray the dimension of size, comparing this mammoth to its surroundings, like the old, broken trail fence and the new growth of young trees.  So often, nature is impossible to replicate. A photographer can only do his best.

This fallen tree will remain here, unchanged, long after I depart this earth…but I had the opportunity to witness it in my lifetime.