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Subcribe to comment rss feedDeborah Hughes discusses one of her favourite pictures
Deborah Hughes
My photography and writing are an arousing of seldom seen inner and outer worlds followed by a gathering up of camera and lens, pen and ink, poetry and prose, or whatever other materials and tools present themselves.
Charlotte Gibb
Charlotte Gibb is an award-winning landscape photographer based in Northern California with an eye for the subtle and sometimes overlooked beauty of the natural world. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, writes and publishes on the subject of photography, and serves as a judge for an international photography competition. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout California.
I came across Bridalveil, a photograph captured by Charlotte Gibbs of Lafayette, California, while reviewing her Flickr photostream. We met for lunch last year when she attended the Moab Photo Symposium near where I live. After our time together, I was eager to get to know her better through her photography.
What immediately struck me about this image was its faithfulness to the intimacy and essence of the name of the elegant Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite National Park. Most shots taken of this famous waterfall are from a distance and wide-angle to convey the impressive and precipitous fall of Bridalveil Creek from the tumescent granite walls towering above the Merced River. Even Ansel Adams’ early black and white compositions fail for me in comparison to Charlotte’s wedding of proximity and mystery with her 400mm lens.
The tension of shadow and illumination, the wisps of silky tulle-like mist, the portrait-framed aspect of the obscured rock face in its coy twirls of cover-up and revelation, anticipate the coming together of waterways in the valley below. Subtle ribbons of stray runoff add to the trousseau of the stream’s submission to gravity.