Looking out from a hollowed cedar

This past summer I spent four days in a workshop with Bryan Peterson, a well known photographer, author, and educator in photography.  Bryan is the founder of The Perfect Picture School of Photography and author of Understanding Exposure as well as many other other fine instructional books.  Bryan is one of those “heroes” I mentioned in an earlier blog.

We were in Glacier National Park, Montana and one morning as several of his students were clamoring to photograph the same waterfall, some of us who find no reward in photographing a cliche took up Bryan’s invitation to go down the trail a bit to learn outdoor off-camera lighting techniques.  We passed by a hollowed out cedar that had been struck by lightening and Bryan used it’s textured bark to launch his instructions.  As he was talking I noticed an emptied knot hole that allowed light through the tree.  I had an idea.

“Hey Bryan,” I blurted out, “wouldn’t it be great to put someone inside the tree looking out as you photographed the bark?”  He seized on the idea to show the offsetting qualities of separate flash settings on two Pocket Wizard triggered flashes and the rest you can see in his You Tube.  Oh, yeah; since it was my idea he put ME in the tree 🙂

One of the things I love about Bryan is that there aren’t any limits to his creativity and despite more than 30 years as a professional he still approaches photography with boyish abandon.