A “Haunted Tree House” – One-Shot Story

On a dark, stormy night in 1995, I witnessed Jerry Uelsmann’s spooky photos in an “Outer Limits” TV series opening and fell in love with his surreal work. Especially his “Tree House.” This Singulart Magazine article about it was written before his death in April 2022.

I’ve always wanted to create something like it. But unlike Uelsmann, I never owned more than one photo enlarger. He used twelve— each contributing small portions of his skillful photo montages.

While Uelsmann loved the idea of digital photography, he remained staunchly analog. But I finally found a way to create my own “Haunted Tree House” digitally– and (mostly) in-camera– when I exchanged my Fuji X-Pro1 mirrorless body for a Fuji X-T1 with a slightly upgraded sensor, an articulating LCD panel and more physical SLR-like controls. And when I discovered that the X-T1 allowed double-exposures, I was off and running.

This article’s image is my spooky Halloween tribute to Jerry. I describe how I made it in an upcoming article… an overdue sequel to this piece on 35mmc.

A PERSONAL NOTE: You may have noticed my recent absence from 35mmc. Earlier this year, my vision suddenly degraded. The symptoms turned my regular annual checkup into an emergency. The problem was “Monocular Diplopia,” which devolved into “Binocular” within a few short weeks. Also called “Shadow Vision,” it produced from one to three faint “shadow” duplicates behind everything I looked at. I could still take photos, but I couldn’t write about them because the text on my computer screen was unreadable. The source cause was chronic Dry Eye. Its painful symptoms were controlled long ago, but it  had eroded the surfaces of my corneas from smooth spheroids to wavy hills and valleys. And the resulting variety of refractions entering my eyes caused the shadows. Complicating that, my brain’s long attempts to compensate pointed my eyes in slightly different directions! So here are two tips for any readers who also suffer from Dry Eye: Get periodic refraction tests! And if glasses are ever needed, it may help to find an optometrist who can order optical blanks from Zeiss Germany. my new glasses use high-refractivity Zeiss lens glass. They appear to have corrected everything– without being as thick as bottle bottoms. Here’s hoping things stay that way.

So Rest in Peace Jerry and Happy Halloween everyone. It’s good to return to a less surreal optical reality!

–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass., writer and avid amateur photographer.

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