A Matter of Trust ©2020 - A road trip in November of 2019 on route 202 just over the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania yielded a property with an extraordinary bare tree. With it’s huge limbs fanning out and reaching like tentacles for the sky, it became (along with the weather-beaten old barn behind it) the background for this piece. My little falconer (defined as a person who keeps or trains birds of prey) is a carte de visite (or visiting card) from my vintage photo collection and dates from the 1860’s. Most people associate daguerreotypes with that era, but these small cards were albumen silver prints, the first commercial method producing a photographic print on paper from a negative. They became extremely popular and were commonly traded and collected among friends and visitors during the Civil War years. After some restoration, minor adjustments and coloring, she fit nicely into the composition. Her menagerie consists of a magnificent Andean Condor that I photographed at The Turtleback Zoo in West Orange, NJ and a large venue of black vultures. Oddly, when I photographed them, they were gathered on the roof of a large modern home in a well manicured neighborhood. I thought they looked much more at home on the roof of the old barn and the bare tree limb. The Andean Condor, coming in for a soft landing, is an imposing creature with the longest wingspan of any raptor (10 to 11 ft). As it’s name suggests, they inhabit the Andes Mountain range along the Pacific coast of western South America. These large scavengers, like other vultures, are principally carrion eaters (meaning they eat animals that are already dead). As nature’s clean-up crew, they help keep us safe from contaminates and the environment clean. After bringing all these elements of my composition together, color, texture and select filters were added for the final piece. As the young falconer would probably tell you, a flutter of wings can quicken the heart or soothe the soul; it’s all “A Matter of Trust”.
