This was one of the first exposures I made on large format film. I brought my daughter that evening to the Bernheim Natural Forest south of Louisville, Kentucky, and set up the Sinar F I’d recently bought from Murphy’s Camera. This was actually the second session; the first round of negatives weren’t completely in focus, as I was still learning how to use the camera. This time I nailed it. I used to load the film in my closet—my daughter, who was seven at the time, would sit in there with me—with a towel stuffed under the crack. When I set up the big Majestic brand steel tripod, the sun was setting behind the hill, casting streaks of light from between the trees onto the surface of the water. The film was Kodak Tri-X 320, and it was developed by State Film Lab here in Louisville. It is, and will always be, one of my favorite photographs.