Tree path
- 📍 Location: Arboretum de Versailles-Chèvreloup, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
An avenue of tall bare trunks, planted in two straight ranks, with a grass track running between them and cow parsley coming up through the grass in a white haze. The canopy had not yet closed for the year, so the light comes down the whole length of it.
I framed upright and centred on the track, letting the two ranks converge naturally. Planted avenues are an argument the photographer does not need to win: the perspective is already built, and the only real decision is where to stand so the trunks line up cleanly.
The colour is deliberately cool and slightly desaturated. Spring green under overcast is a difficult shade — pushed even slightly it goes acid — so I held it back and let the white of the flowers do the brightening instead.
An arboretum is a collection of trees arranged by people, which makes it a strange kind of landscape: nothing here is accidental. Photographing it, I found myself composing the way you would in a building rather than in a wood.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
