Red mist along the river Li
Terry Baker
printed on Giclée Epson Semi-Gloss
As with the image ‘The little bamboo raft’ in this collection, the photograph was taken while cruising down the Li Jiang (River Li) in dull, damp and misty weather. The karst limestone peaks were surrounded in swirls of mist rolling down the steep slopes and they did indeed resemble shadowy, threatening giants. The particular point of interest here was the shapes of the vegetation etched against the pallid, shifting background. The rain-laden half light had all but bleached out any real colour, so the file was converted to monochrome and the colour added with a selection of photo filters. Sepia was initially added to colour the peaks, followed by red to colour the sky. The foreground vegetation was then edged with a subtle touch of red, the whole idea being to go beyond landscape into something much more surreal and evocative; giants lurching out of the mist and held at bay only by the silhouetted trees.
