When your heart is broken, your life becomes a struggle to balance the light. One moment it can seem as if there is light rising and hope is moving forward and things will get better, but the next it can feel as if all the light is fading and you will soon be left alone consumed in darkness and despair.

Behind the Shot:

This piece was created during the worst point in my life. The photo was taken on the last trip I took with my wife before we ended our 7 year relationship. It wasn’t until I had moved out and was going through rough times of depression that I began to edit the image. The first pass on the image was extremely dark, high contrast and black and white. It resonated with me heavily at the time and I poured my soul into the image. As time went on and I began to heal and begin my new life, I knew this image was important to me as it captured this emotional period of time in my life, however with my new perspective and emotional state I made some adjustments. I brought back some color into the image and made additional tweaks to small details.

Overall the image has strong emotional attachment for me. The sun just above the tree lines acting as one of the two major subjects in the image, represents hope and life. As the image does not clearly dictate if this is captured at sunrise or sunset, this subject can either be rising into the frame with the passing of time, indicating an increase and hope and life, or that the sun will soon set, consuming the frame in darkness when all hope has disappeared. This was an aspect of life that fluctuated for me by the minute during that time and was an essential part of this piece.

The other main subject is of course the tree itself. The branches of the tree are gnarled and twisted and come together at the top to form the shape of a heart. I used photoshop to move the branch into a more closed loop to further emphasize the intent of the image. When creating the animated version for this collection, I wanted to loop the three main elements of the message, light, color, and shape. The light dims and the colors fade as the heart shape breaks open. As the heart starts to come back together, the light and color return to the piece. Timing is the final element that only the animation can provide. The heart breaks apart faster than it comes back together. This represent the time needed to heal being a longer road.