Trees I Have Known in 2018

Lone tree

This is one of my favorite trees featured in 2018. And as I selected my best trees for the year I noted it is the only single tree all alone in its landscape. And it is the only tree in this blog which is included in its entirety withing the frame.

Some years back before I began focusing on trees as something other than an element of a landscape I read a photography blog about how it was not necessary to include the top and bottom of a tree in a picture. Which then brings up the question of where to cut off the tree. Are tops or bottoms most important.

Skeletons of Trees from Ute Park Fire

This is a photo of just the tops of denuded pine trees in the Ute Park Burn Scar.

Trees in the Snow

And this is a photograph of just the bottom of fir trees after a snow. And, you could argue, a photograph of the light which fills the forest in which the trees stand. I really like this particular photograph of trees because of the light. Which brings us to shadows the trees cast.

Shadows in the snow

 Aspens are a wonderful subject for shadows and especially aspens in the winter with snow at their feet. Even the shadows do not reveal the tops of the trunks.

Trees on the Shore

The shadows of these trees on the edge of a frozen lake is all about the tops of the trees. And like the trees in the snow photograph it is also abut the light in the forest.

Snowy Trees

This photograph also appears in a recap of landscapes for 2018 which raises the question of when is it a landscape and when is it all about the trees in the landscape. That question comes up with photograph number one in this blog. You could argue it is a landscape with a tree.

And you may have noticed that except for the first photograph they are all in black and white. Trees are great without color. It was only after realizing you did not have to have the whole tree in a photograph that I came to the conclusion that trees are not in need to green to be a tree. The first tree will now, in the depths of winter be without leaves. I want to go back and photograph it stark and bare against its landscape. It has nice bones.

Playing Around with the Landscape

Val Vidal Waiting for Rain by J. Binford-Bell

The first time you visit an area with a camera you pay it sort of straight especially in a landscape as spectacular as the Val Vidal and the Vermejo Park Ranch. The second or third or forth time you visit you are more familiar with the views and you find yourself setting up various pictures. Or standing in one place like the photo below and waiting till just the right moment to take the picture.

Light and Shadow by J. Binford-Bell

The clouds were adding extra dimensions to the view especially when they cast shadows over one ridge or bank of trees or another. Photographers already get to play with the framing of the photo with zoom lenses or switching to another lens. And their are filters. I broke my polarizing filter the second picture I took yesterday and so switched to a warm filter I had and love the results. Not that back in the dry darkroom of my computer I could not change anything I wanted. Like the picture below?

Fire by J. Binford-Bell

 I have been trying to take the definitive picture of a forest devastated by fire for some years now. Yesterday the thunderclouds jumped in with an assist. If you have lived in a forest for any length of time you will know there is always a doubt when the fire danger is high as to whether it is smoke or a cloud. This was a cloud but I was able to play with the colors and make it look like smoke especially as a back drop to the blackened spars of an old fire on the Val Vidal. So this may be the picture. Not that I will stop trying to top it.

Post Card from Not Kansas

Clouds change the atmosphere and ergo the photograph. As does the time of day and the shadows cast. And your mood when you post process also effects the results. Loved the post card look of the photo above and may do the same thing with the photo below.

Gully Waiting for Rain

I found myself depressed by the drought in an area which can be so beautiful in a wet year. I found myself opting for old fashioned treatments of the subjects as if I could push the drought into history and wake up tomorrow to rain and lush grass. I am sure the buffalo below wishes the same. No doubt the VPR feeds their charges. He looks motley only because it is shedding season and a bit disgruntled because we and he never found the females of the herd.

Buffalo looking for something to eat