Mesa Verde occupies 84 square miles in Southwestern Colorado. It is known for its cave dwellings, and for the forest fires that swept through it in 2002. This image expresses the legacy of those fires. By exposing on the sun trying to force it’s way through a blanket of cottony gray clouds, I able to silhouette the dead shrubs and trees that reach towards them. This silhouette speaks of death and destruction, while the brightness of the emerging sun symbolizes the resurrection of the land and all that might yet grow upon it. Since this is primarily a black and white image, I tested it first as a black and white conversion. The black and white version seemed to lose the spark of life, and the feeling of hope expressed by the greater reality of the creamy gray clouds and the trace of light blue around the sun that is granted to us by this color version.