I had to double back as it started to rain to capture this. The leaf penetrated my mind with it’s marbled purple and silvery hue of pinks as if to mirror the summer sunsets that had just passed.
In August, The Luminous Landscape and my family picked up and moved to Montreal Quebec Canada.
Montreal is a rare city that remains full of wonderful contradictions. It is both a burgeoning tech hub (for better or worse) and “the city that capitalism forgot,” as some have said. It is located in the La belle province, a truly abundant and varied place of atmospheric color and life.
It is a genuinely bi-lingual town that has mostly sorted it’s French English tension, at least on the island.
The area we moved to is directly situated at the foot of Mt. Royal. The mountain offers a wall of color in the fall, and the pathways that lead up it are a wonderland of raw inner-city trails that hide the town’s noise below.
Irene and I hike up the mountain daily with our daughters strapped to our backs. I recently took my camera out just as the leaves were turning. My goal was less concerned with capturing the usual display of painterly fall dazzles but rather to show the mystery, ennui, and romance of this autumn feel under the canopy of trees and within our quieting park.
I was snapping these Sulphur shelf mushrooms on the other side of this tree. As I walked around it to leave I was stunned. This little magic window of light provided an enchanting moment. I’ve slightly highlighted the spot-light, but it remains mostly untouched for contrast. I allowed a natural mask of dark to remain around the tree rather then bring any detail to the same plane as the tree and mushroom focus. The blown out center mushroom is intended. Side note: Psilocybin has been an always revolutionary but long term aspect of my own development.
The other side of the tree. I brought out the contrast only a touch and allowed the tree’s slightly over exposed grey/green bark to remain as a way of enabling natural contrast to the yellows. The framing is designed to lead the eye upward as the angle suggests, but keep us from splitting the frame perfectly in the center.
The George-Étienne Cartier Monument. An angel that guards our town. This overcast light and the monumental mood around what monuments should remain haunts this image. The covered over ACAB graffiti is a faint gesture.
The long lens allows for a variation of options for shooting. In this case, I can use a foreshortening and gain a sense of distance while not opening the frame to too many subjects. Ocean in an ocean.
Stopped down initially and cropped for width. I was playing with the idea of the 35mm wide angle without using either, simply by cropping and deciding on what to put in frame before hand. I keyed up the goal posts by pulling the overall light down and pushing the contrast a touch. Only the brightest leaves and the white goal posts pop, generating distance and focus. The austerity and mood was the goal. I like the red touch.
Ocean found this little gem and I couldn’t resist it’s beautiful cascade of grey and white. Side note once again: Psilocybin can be micro-dosed daily and the neuroplasticity engaged and the unification of the brain’s hemispheres initiate a broadening of perspective that can not be described or under-estimated when trying to work through trauma, mood regulation, concentration or spiritual insight. Speaking of spiritual insight; maybe the flares are trying to tell us something. This was the view as the clouds parted and the tree tops told their story with light. I’ve added some contrast and allowed the colors in the flares to remain Again, using contrast and pushing a shot to be darker then one is usually willing, when the center calls for it, allows a natural masking of the focus and a clear subsequent frame to emerge.There’s nothing to change in this shot.
Josh Reichmann
October 2020
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