While out walking at Stanford yesterday afternoon, Lily and I came across this sunken oak tree planting – with these beautiful steps tiered down to the old oak’s ground level. The steps had some great light and shadows – in the wonderfully diffuse light of a mostly cloudy day.
My late friend Chris Gulker first turned me on to these kinds of scenes. Just walking with him was an experience in seeing things – that I would never have seen. Chris paid special attention to the combination of lights and shadows that most of us miss. He just saw the world differently. A favorite example is the stairstep railings shot at Cantor – where Chris saw shadows from the railings I never would have seen. Learning to see a bit through his eyes was such a treat.
Chris would have loved these steps down to the heritage Oak. I know we would have lingered for a while looking at these lights and shadows – just as Lily and I did.
This image was shot with my Canon PowerShot S95 and post-processed using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.
Hope you like these steps too!