About 35 miles south of Yosemite Village stands Yosemite’s largest grove of Redwoods. They are the largest of all living things, and many have endured for thousands of years. As I passed through this deeply shaded forest of giant trees, l looked for shafts of light filtering down into the forest that would help me to both abstract them and define their character within a landscape photograph. I found this pair of stately redwoods standing side by side, each with strong light grazing the bases of their huge trunks. Moving in to stress the way this light brought out the textures of their distinctive richly colored bark, I noticed that next to each of them was a small set of green branches, symbolizing a pair of relatively youthful neighbors. I used a vertical frame to imply height, and kept moving my position until each of the smaller trees displayed only the ends of their brightly illuminated branches against a deeply shadowed background. I wanted to express a sense of community with this image, and by using the abstracting power of light and shadow and drawing on the beauty and meaning of color, I was able to so.