I love being out in the woods. I love trees. And I especially love trees with a unique look or texture to them.

Think peeling flaking bark. Jagged lines and textures. Different shapes and surfaces. Tree trunks with color. Colors often generated by living in communion with other living organisms. Moss, lichen, vines.

Most of all I like shape and texture. And the more unique and interesting it is the more I like it. Some of the most unique shapes and textures are found in dead and decaying trees.

Wood as it returns to the earth in a slow decay of years and centuries takes on unimaginable forms. On one short hike at Letchworth State Park I stumbled upon a series of trees in this state. Each tree was dead. They were broken off. There were wholes in them.

I was initially drawn to the shape and texture of the dead broken down tree. The focus of my lens was on the texture and shape of the dead tree. I really enjoy the shape and texture that really only exist in nature.

Get closer

The other aspect I really enjoyed in these photographs came from the combination of getting really close to the tree trunk and using a shallow depth of field. Creating the images in this manner created an effect where the entire forest in the background is completely out of focus. So much so that you really can’t make out what is there. The only thing left to see is color and vague shapes. I really like how that color and lack of focus contrasts with the extreme detail of the surface on the tree trunk itself.

Then I started to think, “What would it look like if I framed the image the same way, but instead focused on the forest in the background rather than the tree trunk in the foreground.”

What happened is the tree trunk becomes a frame for the image. The out of focus tree trunk is a border. It blocks part of the scene. Leaving only a portion in view. Directing the viewers eye to one lactation in the frame. This is especially true in the images where the photo is taken through a hole in the tree trunk. A small section of the forest is now isolated and that is the only part that can be seen.

Compare and contrast

I really like these images paired together to see the contrast between the images. I don’t think either images is necessarily better than the other. They are just two very different images of the same scene. And that is the beauty and creativity in photography.

As a photographer you can create completely different images simply by choosing where to place your focus. The choices we make drastically alter the photo. The camera doesn’t decide. Even the scene in front of us doesn’t determine what the image will look like in the end. We as creative individuals have a lot of control over what the final product is.

What do you as the viewer think? Which image do you like better? The photo focusing on the tree trunk, or the photo next to it focusing on the forest in the background.

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