A Profession Of Hope

by Lois Bryan

Title

A Profession Of Hope

Artist

Lois Bryan

Medium

Photograph - Photography / Digital Art

Description

Though here in the Mid-Atlantic area we think of winter as a time of dark skies, cold temperatures and either miserable, freezing rain or biting, blowing, blinding white snows, it can also give us days of almost warm sunlight and nuances of mellow neutral colors. Driving through rural Central Pennsylvania in the heart of the Laurel Highlands on a late December afternoon, if you keep your eyes peeled, you can find many such lovely scenes. Neat and trim barns, though having seen many years of life and work, are tucked away between the trees and at the bottoms of steep hills that will climb to dizzying mountain heights. Quietly resting during the long dark months to pass, the gentle meadows wait to blossom again into spring and summer crops.

My thanks to the author Brian Brett, a Canadian writer, for the title. The full quote is "Farming is a profession of hope" ... a sentiment which I believe and which I think this particular image represents.

I captured the image of this farm in late December several years ago, near Pavia, Pennsylvania. I must have caught it between snow storms as this area is usually well covered in the white stuff by that time of year. I fell in love with the late afternoon light and the muted monochromatic tones.

Photographic work from the Nikon D40x and the 18-200mm vr Nikkor lens in 2008. Over the years this shot has been sitting in the computer and posted elsewhere in a different version, having been treated to tweaks by many editions of Photoshop, as well as Photomatix Pro for a bit of HDR, and a trip to Corel Painter. The painterly / colored pencil version you see here is its latest incarnation.


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November 20th, 2014

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