King oak
- 📍 Location: Hindré oak, Brocéliande forest, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The oak stands in a clearing of its own making, and its lower limbs spread almost horizontally to a width the tall thin trees around it cannot come near. That difference in habit is the picture: one shape that grew outward, surrounded by hundreds that grew upward.
Black and white, and not reluctantly. In colour this clearing is a wash of similar greens and the tree loses its edges; in monochrome the crown becomes a dark mass, the ferns below turn bright, and the trunks behind separate into pale verticals.
I framed upright and put the oak low in the centre, giving the bare canopy room above it. The ferns fill the bottom of the frame with a light even texture that stops the dark crown from sitting on nothing.
Brocéliande is a forest people come to for stories, and the trees here carry a lot of borrowed meaning. I tried to leave the legend out of it. What I photographed is simply a very old tree that has been given enough space and enough time, and needs no myth added to it.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
