Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

What's Left Behind
This is another of my “what is that?” photographs. Since I haven’t gotten out to shoot much lately I decided to dive into my archives for some fun. Winter doldrums, hmmm?

So, what is this?

A winter’s afternoon of golden sunlight, the Cambridge Valley’s back roads lined with fields of deep, freshly fallen snow. Everything is soft and still. Even the sunlight itself is eerily “quiet”. Then, like huge paint brush strokes upon the land there suddenly appears to my eyes the remnants of the previous evening’s modern enjoyments: snowmobile tracks, coursing over the pastures of virgin snow, cutting within the rows of corn stubble now golden in the afternoon sunlight. Patterns of revelry recalling rosy cheeks and watering eyes, full robust laughter and shouts echoing throughout the woodlands, hearts pounding in chests from exertion and excitement, and the stillness of the forests, pastures and fields being broken by the massive roaring and grinding of the “beasts of winter”, the snowmobiles.

All tracks in the snow give flight to my imagination, be they made by animals or humans. But I especially enjoy the broad swaths of snow mobile tracks curlicue-ing over hill and dale in the winters. I enjoy them all the more because of the further re-creations they sometimes represent to me in my artworks. This particular photograph, altered, resembles, to me, an alien terrain on a distant planet, or something embryonic. Either way, the shadows in the tracks caused by that bright golden sun create such sharp detail against the rich golden corn stubble. Perhaps this is a pizza thickly covered with mozzarella cheese or a cake with rich butter cream frosting swirled about for a lucky birthday boy or girl.

Whatever you care to imagine I hope this artwork gives you pleasure. -June Mohan
Photos: (Copyright Mohan 2006) To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com.