Golden Grove

This forest no longer exists. It was a working tree farm in rural Oregon, tens of thousands of poplars planted by hand in rows so straight they played tricks on your eyes. Every fall, all of those trees turned gold at the same moment, and an ordinary farm became one of the most surreal places in America. Then the land changed hands, the trees came down, and that was that.
I remember the sound most of all, millions of dry leaves moving at once, like quiet applause. The ground was ankle deep in gold. The rows lined up no matter which way I turned, corridor after corridor of slender silver trunks, and down the center of each one ran a thin seam of blue sky.
I made this frame low and wide, so the trees tower the way they did when I stood under them and the corridor pulls your eye all the way to its vanishing point. Symmetry this perfect does not happen in nature. Someone planted it, one sapling at a time, and never knew they were building a cathedral.
Of everything I have photographed, this is the image I can never make again. No one can. On a wall it does what the place did in person, it pulls you in and warms the whole room, and it comes with a story your guests will ask about. Printed and finished to gallery standard. A forest that is gone, still standing in your home.