Perfection

This is one of Timm's most perfected images, shot one day when he was out with Christie. She says that Timm took dozens of shots to get to this one, endlessly framing and composing (for example, worrying the arrangement of the leaves in the foreground until they looked "most natural').

Then came the "studio" work, with some 85 or so adjustments in Photoshop, sharpening, layering, adding channels of motion and shadow, water reflections, motion blur, bringing out the light in the back-, mid- and foregrounds, adjusting hue and saturation, balancing color inside the matrix of the whole, until there is a composed photograph more natural than nature itself, full of the wonder and surprise of discovery.

How much work, I wonder, how many hours did it take to arrive at this moment of Eden, this perfection of eye and heart and mind?

I'll never be learned enough to bring an image to such burning, serene presence; this is an art that was truly lost with Timm. Mastery is a combination of art and heart which we can only give thanks for when we find it, as here.