Abstract Trees

It was only by happenstance that I spotted these trees on my way home one evening. Because of especially bad traffic that day along my usual route home, I decided to take a different way.  As I drove along the back roads, I noticed the stand of trees and slowed down to get a look at them.  I thought they might make for some interesting photographs, so I made a mental note of the location so I could return the following weekend.  As it turned out, it was a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of days, before I could return to the area to photograph the stand. 

The day I went back was cold and overcast. With the rain that had fallen over the previous day or two, there was a lot of standing water on the ground.  I, of course, had come completely unprepared for that.  Because of the water, I was somewhat limited in the positions from which I could get shots, but I was able to find several spots that provided some very nice compositions.

Studying the trees in front of me, I began to visualize a number of images in which the subject wasn’t the trees. Rather, it was an abstract view of the lines formed by the trunks, the contrast created by the dark trees and the lighter background, and the spots of color.

I chose to use my 100-400mm telephoto lens for a couple of reasons. First, it narrowed the angle of view so I could eliminate both the ground and the treetops.  This emphasized the lines created by the trees by focusing only on the middle section of the trunks.  Second, telephoto lenses tend to compress the space within a photograph making objects in the image appear to be closer than they really are.  This created an image in which the trunks all generally appear to be on the same plane when, in fact, the trees in the center of the picture are actually about 30 to 40 feet behind the trees on the edges of the photograph.  However, tonal differences in the trunks still provide a sense of depth as the darker trunks appear to be closer to the camera while the lighter trunks seem to be farther away.

Settings:  170mm, 0.6 sec, f/36, ISO 400