Edmund Teske was introduced to Olive Hill, Aline Barnsdall's estate in the center of Hollywood, shortly after he moved to Los Angeles. His attraction to the trees on the estate grew out of his reverence for nature.

The reversed tones and varied colors of brown and dark red were achieved by twice exposing the printing paper to light: first while under the negative (made twenty years earlier) in the enlarger and a second time while the print was wet with the developing chemicals. At the second stage of development, the print reacted to the light and changed color from gray to russet, brown, and reddish brown in a process Teske called duotone solarization. His manipulation of the tones produced a sense of mystery and foreboding in the landscape.