So the Caterpillar Photographic Society got under way and the first category drawn out of the hat was “Tree”.
We had a month to take a photo that was related to “tree”, I spent a while contemplating what I should do.
It was pretty evident that the easiest thing to do would be to take a full on picture of a tree, either with a sunrise through it or a silhouette etc.
I didn’t fancy doing the usual type of photo so I got to thinking that I needed to study trees a little bit. Walking into town one day, with my camera handily stowed in my LowePro back pack, I was going to look for some interesting branch action in the churchyards and parks around the town centre. Just before crossing the English Bridge I spotted the Abbey Gardens which is a little relaxation area next to the Wakeman Secondary school and has a habit at night of being the hangout for the town’s alcoholics.
Heading into the gardens I was struck by the variation of trees and took many photos of some of the cool arrangements of branches with the school in the background, or a statue or some flowering blossom etc.
Then a tree, not very attractive looking, (not that I think of trees like that), stood out and I noticed the big deep furrows of the bark heading skywards.
This photo was taken with my Canon 500D and a stock 18-55 mm lens, looking straight up the tree trunk. The trunk was so wide I would have needed three people joining hands to reach around it entirely so I had plenty enough to fill the frame. The camera was on sitting on the tree pointing straight up.
The challenge then was how to deal with the focus, I tried setting it about 2/3rds of the way into the picture and took a few photos. The best looking one was this image, with an ISO of 125 and a shutter speed of 1/60th sec with an f-stop of 5.6
I cropped in a little bit too as there was a tiny bit of blue sky in the one corner. But what struck me was why I liked this image. It reminded me of some rocky mountains if you viewed them from an aeroplane, or a lava flow that had long since coagulated. It just didn’t look like a tree.
On the way back out of town I had a new 50mm 2.8 Canon lens so I thought I’d stop at the tree again to do a better picture but the short depth of field meant that the pictures were too restricted, the top of the trough would be in focus but the base of it would be out of focus. I know now just how critical that DOF can be and how easy it is to use it incorrectly.
My submission didn’t win the competition but it made me happy that I’d successfully entered a picture without the entire tree being in it. Most of the other entrants’ photos had a whole tree in them so I was please when I had some good positive feedback as to the abstract nature of my photo.
I used this feedback to help me consider photos more from my own point of view and what I liked rather than what I thought others might like. There were a couple of members who submitted an inferior (inferior to their other photo) picture as they thought it would please people more, but in most cases it was the opposite. A couple also submitted pictures that were outside of the qualifying period. You’re supposed to take the photo in the month of the challenge so when a field of ripe barley turned up in February it was viewed with some suspicion, but no names….
To summarise my experiences then on this assignment,
- Choose to submit the photo that pleases you the most, not what you think others will like.
- Get close to what your photographing, they have more that just one photogenic side.
- A better lens won’t make a difference unless you know how to use it.
- Go for a wander around, there are loads of subjects all around where you live, you just don’t see them anymore.
In the next post I’ll try and explain why and how I took the photo for the next assignment which was “Close-Up”
See you then!
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