Apparition

Apparition by Alex Noriega, on Flickr

I’ve just published a collection of eighteen new images from my winter travels in Wyoming, Utah, and California. Check out the rest here if you're so inclined: www.alexnoriega.com/winter-2019

Most photos I make fall into two categories: ones that I'm initially excited about and sooner or later end up disliking; and ones that I'm at first lukewarm about and which slowly grow on me.

But there's a third category: every once in a while, when I'm making a photograph, I just KNOW. I already know that I love it, and I know that I'm going to love it for years - possibly for the rest of my life. These are the ones that would make it into a retrospective book after a lifetime of work, provided I'm lucky enough to continue photographing and living that long. I'm typically alone when making these photos, as that's when I tend to do my best work. I'm often cursing aloud in excitement as well.

This was one of those images for me. In fact, it may be my favorite I've yet made in nearly a decade of photographing. My time in Yellowstone last month was primarily spent focused not on geothermal features or wildlife, but on the way these mists interacted with the snowy trees. I had a hell of a time coming up with a good title for this one, as those close to me can attest. I saw a lot of possible interpretations of the image--a lot of stories that these trees could tell. What do you see?