This is one of my most popular images of Angkor Wat/Ta Prohm. I had just come out of the maze of tunnels I took to get to this courtyard, and stopped just outside of the door because there was another photographer with a tripod in the area I wanted to set up. As I waited I noticed the tree root and the textures of it. Then I noticed the stone and its textures. I started setting up with the photographer still in frame. It was early and I knew I would not have long before some other tourists would wander into the courtyard. As soon as the photographer left, I made my exposure. Just as I did a group of tourists walked into the frame.
It was not one of the images that caught my eye immediately as I started going through an edit ten years ago. It was not one of the several 4x5s that I remembered most because the others had much more thought going into them. A lot of time I would return for a shot the next year after reviewing the shot from a 6x7 and re-shoot on the larger format.
I really had no way to print all of my negs for many years. Once while visiting my family I used a friend's darkroom to proof the big negatives and decided to give this one to my mother for a Christmas Present. It was in her living room for years and the more I looked at it the stronger it became for me. When she died I inherited it back and it soon became a favorite. The silver-gelatin print I made still did not seem to have the quality I saw in the negative. I had a friend scan it for me and made my corrections for brightness and contrast in Photoshop and the prints began to 'sing' in a way I had hoped.
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