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Branch & Shadow — December, 2002
Canon 1Ds with 16-35mm f/2.8L @ 35mm. ISO 160
Photographs are usually about things, not their absence. But in art there is the concept of "negative space", where what isn't there is as important as what is. The above photograph nicely exemplifies this concept, and so a look at how it was made, and how it can be interpreted may be worthwhile.
The photograph was made inWhite Sands National Parkjust about an hour after an early December sunrise. The "good light" was quickly fading and I knew that within less than another hour the light would become flat and uninteresting. Though I felt like a kid in a candy store — there were so many fascinating photographic possibilities available, I was looking for something that would capture the feeling of strong contrasts that I was seeing all around me.
What first caught my eye as I was hiking through the dunes was how this particular plant was backlit. Yet, I literally could see ...

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Michael Reichmann is the founder of the Luminous Landscape. Michael passed away in May 2016. Since its inception in 1999 LuLa has become the world's largest site devoted to the art, craft, and technology of photography. Each month more than one million people from every country on the globe visit LuLa.
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