Sliding head
- 📍 Location: Brocéliande forest, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
One pine stands on the open heath with its crown pushed right over to one side, as if the whole tree had started to lean and then thought better of it. The heather and gorse around it were catching the last light while the sky behind had already gone heavy.
I framed upright with the tree high and slightly off centre, and left the entire lower half to the scrub. That scrub is doing the lighting: every stem picks up a thin gold rim from the low sun, so the bottom of the picture glows while the top stays dark.
The exposure sits well down to protect that contrast. Brightening the shadows would have shown a great deal more moorland and cost the image its one quality — the sense of a single lit shape in a landscape that is mostly going dark.
The heath here is the open part of a forest known for its legends, and it is far less visited than the woods. I keep going back to the edges of famous places rather than their centres; there is usually more to photograph and nobody in the way.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
