Twenty Minutes in Heaven, Lake Tahoe

Like most people, I love sunsets. More often than not, I enjoy them without exposing any film. The conditions have to be right to create a compelling image that conveys the mood and beauty of the place. On this tumultuous evening the sunset sky was colorful, but had an unappealing cloud structure and the water was black, cold and choppy. I liked the mood and motion, and chose to create a more impressionistic image to represent what I felt. I waited until the peak of sunset passed, covered my lens with a dark, neutral grey filter to hold back the light, and exposed my 6x17cm panoramic film for 20 minutes. During that time, the clouds blew across the scene creating waves of rich color in the sky. The wind chopped water blended into a delicate silk, softening the tone of the evening and reflecting the glow of the sky. This extreme exposure time brought my vision to light, translating what I felt onto my palette of big film. The final prints, as I had envisioned, wrap the viewer in a blanket of Lake Tahoe mountain beauty.