“I’ve been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.” Said, Matisse. I took this photograph in the Austrian Alps one rainy morning. I was hoping for a dramatic color show in the sky, but the sun was only able to offer one beam of light across the blue steel of the snow capped alps. I decided to juxtapose the simple tree in the saddle against the mountains and in order to do this I used a 400mm telephoto lens. The tree was still too far away and was lost against the mountain range so I used a 4 stop neutral density filter to dim the sky and turn the foreground close to solid black. Now the lone tree screams to you, “Look at me!” despite the looming Alps, and cloud bursts swirling around them. Black can make or brake photographs, as well as paintings, or any art for that matter. Learn to use it as a guide for the eye, and your art will take on new meaning.