jeudi 16 décembre 2004

Look and you will see... The wood from the trees There are not many subjects you can photograph from close-up or afar, with wide-angle or telephoto lens, in any season or lighting conditions... but trees are such a subject. They come in many shapes, sizes and colours and can differ as much from example to example as from species to species. Nature moves at its own pace... and to see any noticeable change in a tree you have to adapt yourself by either moving around the subject, returning during another season, finding a specimen of a different age and stature, or by fitting a different lens to your camera as a last resort perhaps. With trees as a photographic subject your choice is enormous. You may not be have a single sapling in your garden or be able to grow a Japanese bonsai on your indoor window ledge... or see the tallest or oldest in the world such as the Coast Redwood of North America which can grow to a height of almost 400 feet or the Bristlecone Pine which can be well over 4,000 years old... but every country large or small will provide more than enough variety for your camera if you look around first. Take England for example where a solitary gnarled oak on a village green is probably more noticeable than any in a small clump of tens of beeches on the skyline of Wiltshire's Great Ridgeway or any of the tens of millions in Kielder, Europe's largest man-made forest. However, each example has its own character revealed through size, shape, colour... even movement and location. Trees can be photographed in all seasons. Winter lays bare the branches of our native deciduous species allowing light to play an important part in photographic composition and variety of tones. How different the same scene can appear in summer when a canopy of leaves clothe the branches and filter the sun's rays allowing only the occasional shaft of light through. Spring gives freshness in the buds on the branches and in the autumn a kaleidoscope of changing colour is followed by carpet of fallen leaves on the ground... the Horse Chestnuts below which I spotted on the roadside outside my house were more interesting to look down at through a camera lens than to look up at on the tree's higher branches where they were rather insignificant. Ordinary locations may prove to be more interesting on further examination... in the same forest or field you may find old fallen trees lying next to young saplings. Wind, decay, age as well as the woodman's axe and giant tree harvesting machine all provide a bounty of photogenic material. The height of trees can be emphasised with a wide-angle lens from a close-up position where diminishing perspective doesn't matter so much. Narrower tree trunks don't appear to "fall over" as tall buildings do when photographed this way. This emphasis can be used on the horizontal plane too by featuring parts of a tree such as felled and chopped branches in the foreground with their shorn trunks in the middle distance or background. Different exposure techniques can be used to favour, for example in the top image of the mountain oak on a Welsh hillside, as a silhouette by exposing for the sunlit background and sky... or alternatively can reveal the delicate detail of translucent leaves or the richness of textured bark. Varied light and shade mean that exposure has to be carefully measured and calculated. Generally though, colour negative and black-and-white chromogenic films such as Ilford XP-2 Super are ideal as they can be rated variably according to lighting conditions whilst providing fine grain and even toned negatives with good contrast suitable for straight printing without tricky manipulations. If you are using black-and-white film additional lens filters are useful... a green filter will lighten most leaf tones whilst an orange or red one will do the same for rich brown trunks and branches... also darkening a blue sky. You should find a deep yellow or light orange filter especially useful for most tree subjects. For colour film users... just shoot, shoot and shoot... a 28-85mm zoom on your camera and a couple of rolls of colour negative film in your pocket (and remember to carry a chromogenic black-and-white film which can also be processes at the same time as colour negative films in most commercial processing labs or High Street stores) should enable you to enjoy this subject and come back with some memorable images of an everyday subject many people hardly notice. All you have to do is look carefully before you point and shoot... don't fall into the trap of not being able to see the wood for the trees! 8:30:37 PM    comment []