• Vertical Blue received a First Place Award of Excellence for the "Seasons" exhibition at the J. Mane Gallery in March of 2018.

I created Vertical Blue like most other abstracts, by asking myself "what if?"

What if, instead of using color adjustments to make these aspen trunks appear white (or a slight yellow) in the final photograph, I switched things up and pushed the saturation on the naturally occurring blue cast of the shadows?

I thought my first attempt was a failure. I didn't push the saturation far enough and was left with this muddy undefined mess of a composition. Then I began thinking about my painting classes and about how, to create depth in a painting, you use blue to create atmospheric haze. And again, I thought "what if?" 

What if I were to reverse the very concept and instead of using blue to show depth through distance, I pulled all the blue forward even more by going all out with the saturation to create a lack of depth? 

By pulling the natural blues cast by the shadows forward, through what I consider extreme saturation, color and contrast adjustments, I create this very shallow 2 dimensional abstract of warm yellow aspens trees in autumn being caged in by the unavoidable cold of the oncoming winter.