🧙♂️ SOME TREES ARE MEANT – and possibly sent – to mark you; like this magnificent, if decidedly dead one near Keswick.
It caught my eye immediately on my first visit up here in decades, about 5 years ago, radiating resplendently in the late afternoon sun.
This shot is only from last year, but my first real attempt to do something worthy of the things it must have seen.
I don’t even know what sort of tree it is, and not having leaves doesn’t help. Me, though, I prefer to experience living creatures viscerally first; taking it in visually; placing my hand on the bark and fitting my fingers into the ridges; breathing in its being.
If someone wants to pin a name on them later, then why not, but knowing that label isn’t a make-or-break deal for me.
I finally got around to doing something with this picture after my winter lull, when I’m advised to stay away from the Lakes at all cost, or risk freezing off any exposed bits of my body if the rain doesn’t rot them first.
The impetus was from my Creative Smartphone Photography Group, where the weekly theme is Black & White at the moment. I’d long imagined this looking fine in strong shades of grey, and I wasn’t wrong.
I have a lot of work to do before I get one I’m very happy with. This was taken on a scouting session to assess a couple of angles with the sun rapidly disappearing into Derwentwater behind me. Like Arnie in Terminator… I’ll be back!
One of the creative decisions to be made when shooting this sort of subject is how close to get, or how much to zoom in. Specifically, should you try to get all the branches in – the whole tree, in other words – or should you focus on a detail or subset of the ‘bigger picture’.
I had shots with the whole tree but wasn’t happy with the way the horizon interfered with the silhouette. My makeshift wide-angle lens didn’t allow me to get as close as I’d have liked to solve that problem. But that’s fine, these are artistic challenges, nothing else, and all part of the game.
Depth of field was also a ‘challenge’. When you get up close and personal with an impressive beast like this, you’ve got long branches coming straight at you, and others shooting off left and right and yet others pointing away from you. Good luck with that!
Anyway, let’s not lose sight of the wood for the tree, as it were. The photo’s one thing; the experience of being in the presence of this elder countryman is quite another.
Do you prefer the colour or the black and white version, by the way? As usual, I can’t decide, but I’m experimenting with monochrome quite a bit at the moment and finding it a very satisfying experience.
It’s possibly more demanding than colour to get a great shot – watch this space for more attempts to do just that!
Happy decolouring!
The Laggard of Lakeland 
(Lakeland Chronicles No.32)
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Wainwright Log: 9 of 214 Fells Felled / 0 Books Bashed / Visit
