It was late June of 2020 when I finally had to take a break from work. For the past few months, I had been burying myself in work to avoid the news. That can be a hard task when your job is the executive producer of a news show.
After months of not knowing what the future was going to bring, my company insisted that all leaders take some time off to show the staff it was ok to do the same. We had all been working overtime and burning ourselves out, this was going to be the new normal for a while, we need to step away sometimes.
In a province I hadn’t really explored and absent my close friends, I did what I normally do when I need to give myself some space: I drove.
This time to a spot I had passed once but never really explored, Riding Mountain National Park
Honestly, it’s gorgeous.
I’ve been back a few times since, but there is something about visiting a place for a first time where you just get lost in things. The beach. The noise. The shops and people. It felt like the start of every 80’s summer town movie.
I spent part of the first few hours wandering the space, and I became fixated on this one tree.
There’s this boardwalk that takes you to the boat and paddleboard rental. Further down there are benches under trees. But a while back there’s this one tree that just stands out. For whatever reason, I just really liked the way the tree looked.
As sunset hit, I started walking around focusing on the tree. Changing distance, location, and shutter speed, I spent a bunch of time trying to get the shot I saw in my head.
Eventually, I moved back to the boardwalk and saw the boats, the sunset, the tree standing tall through all of it. And that’s when I got the shot.
Jamming all of my ND filters on my Pentax K-50, I could do a 30-second exposure. Smoothing out the water, removing the flies, and focusing just on the tree.
Editing the photo in Lightroom took a few passes, and I wasn’t overly happy with it till months later. The first pass was a lot darker; a reflection of my mental health at the time.
But with therapy, that mood lightened slightly.
The mindset shift brought on in therapy helped change the way I felt about myself, and I wanted that reflected in my photo. So, I retouched it.
Until we had the final one that fit who I was, and what I wanted to do, and showed there was potential for so much more.
