2021 New Work: II

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to the Pacific Northwest and visit the lush green forests along the coast. One particular destination was overwhelmingly green and mossy and is well known by many. I wanted to share this image because I discovered something curious prior to visiting this area, which I hope this image helps illustrate.

This particular forest is EXTREMELY popular among Landscape Photographers and I’ve seen many images from here. The one thing that I found curious though was I only have ever seen one image with any type of motion. ALL other images were sharp, stationary and without motion. I don’t often look at images prior to visiting an area but in this case, images of this landscape are prevalent everywhere.

This forest is calm and tranquil yet is in constant decay and growth. Water drips from the mossy trees days after a rain, trees grow from fallen trees and moss covers everything in no time at all. Motion. So hiking through this forest I couldn’t help but feel this sense of change and motion in the landscape and my intention became clear; to make an image (several) which depicted this motion. The image below is a single exposure yet retains detail among the motion. I don’t know if it’s my best image but I do know that it’s at least not like the 10,000 other images from this landscape and that’s ok with me.

How have you interpreted a popular location in your own way? I’m curious to hear as I gain equal inspiration from others as I do the landscape.

Thanks, Eric

Olympic national park // February 2021