Summer Trees

I enjoy making photos of trees.  But let's face it, it is a whole lot easier to do in the fall when the forest is filled with color, in the winter when the bare trees make interesting minimalist shapes, and in the spring when the trees are covered with colorful, fluorescent appearing buds.  I personally find the summer the most difficult time to make images of trees.  They are so.....green!  This was an issue during my recent trip to the Smoky Mountains.  As I mentioned in a prior post, I missed the wildflowers because they bloomed a month early this year and the mountain laurel still had not come into bloom. There were fantastic mountains, sunrises, sunsets, water, and trees...lots of green trees. When out hiking I was constantly looking through the viewfinder, generally with my 70-200 lens, trying to isolate interesting patterns that the trees made. I am was never really quite sure I knew what I was looking for but I would always know when I found it.  It usually revolved about finding an order or a pleasing pattern to the trunks, branches and leaves.  At one point, I was on a trail that was fairly heavily used.  As I was walking and looking through the viewfinder at patches of trees that I thought might contain what I was looking for, I found a pleasing pattern  I stopped and set up my camera and tripod.  I honestly can not recall if the image in this post was that particular one or not, but it really doesn't matter.

A woman who was hiking by walked up to me with some interest and asked what I was photographing.  "Trees" I told her....and she visibly registered disappointment, hoping for something more interesting.  "Why trees?" she asked as she was about to walk away.  Hoping to regain her interest, I told her that it wasn't really the trees that I was photographing but, rather, the interesting shapes they made when you just looked at a area of them.  And I asked her if she wanted to see what I meant by looking at the picture on my LCD.  "Sure" she said.  I showed her the Live View image and she still looked at me quizzically.  "It's just trees" she said, and she walked away.

Summer Trees

Copyright Howard Grill