The Many Moods of Trees

I've been sitting at home the entire week fighting cold symptoms and thoroughly annoyed about the whole deal. It's not just about missing work . . . feeling all sickly like this pretty much keeps me incarcerated inside. And even though I can do any number of things inside, it doesn't work so well when one of my main ambitions is sleeping and getting to a healthier state. I would much rather be out, somewhere, anywhere with camera in hand, watching for that chance at a really cool image.

Something as simple as a tree, a leaf, a branch, can offer so many possibilities. A single tree can take on multiple personalities depending on the time of day, the weather, the angle of the sun, the direction from which an image is made.

This little stand of trees is out in a farm field, a tiny, ancient bulldozer resting and rusting down underneath the branches. On a normal, sunny day I drive right by. But that day was covered in fog and the trees and dozer took on a whole new personality in the haze. Shot with the Canon A85 on a tripod.

This particular leaf actually isn't from a tree, but I couldn't resist including it. It was part of the forest floor from last summer. These plants, with their big, rich green leaves are everywhere. I positioned a diffusion screen overhead to soften the sunlight punching down through the trees and tried out a number of different compositions with my D300 and the 105mm micro lens.

I was driving home from work one foggy afternoon and this spot caught my eye. It's just a simple little stand of dark trees, bordered on one side by a small meadow. Somewhere, I had seen a photo that had been made using camera shake and it was something I wanted to try. This shot was with the Canon A85. I set the shutter speed to about a second, held the camera to my eye, pressed the shutter button and as the exposure was made, pushed the camera straight out from my face. This particular image has turned out to be a favorite among many people who see it.

After a rain one summer day. I just stepped out of my cabin door and looked for a likely prospect along the edge of trees that surround me. Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm micro lens, set up on a tripod.

One very cold day earlier this month. I snowshoed out into the woods with something else in mind and stopped here. There's something rather mysterious about scenes like this, as well as primitive, ancient, elemental, a person could come up with all kinds of descriptions. Made with my tripod mounted D300 and 18-50mm lens.