Water Is Life - West Virginia (Old Friends Collection) / by sam taylor

Water Is Life - West Virginia

Good Friday Morning!

It’s starting to be “Art Show Season”, a busy time of year for us. It means I’m looking through the images of the last year or two, and trying to decide what to print, what to make larges pieces from, and where the heck are they all going. It also means that I get to see my work, and how it has progressed over the years - and I also get to revisit “old friends” - images that were formative in my work.

I think I’m going to do a little set of those “old friends” over the next few weeks as I see them, give them a chance to shine once more.

Today’s image is literally the first image I promoted as a “professional photographer”. I hadn’t shown anywhere. I wasn’t juried, trained, sold, or commissioned yet. But I had taken a collection of photos that I thought were pretty good, and this was one that I was extra happy with.

When I took this image, the Shay Run drainage wasn’t famous. I’d only seen a few photos of these falls, and even direction for how to get there were spotty. How the internet has changed all that. But I still remember the magic and wonder at seeing this particular fall for the first time - how it made me feel like there are truly unbelievable places in this state, places so lush, so transcendent, that I couldn’t believe I was standing there.

This image was early enough - it was taken on my now long-gone point and shoot, using manual settings and my backpack as a tripod.

Hope folks enjoy it, and glad to share it with folks again.

Water Is Life - West Virginia