White trunks
- 📍 Location: Brocéliande forest, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
A stand of pale-barked trees, close together and almost all vertical, with low scrub between them catching the light. In colour this is an unremarkable patch of wood; the picture only exists because of what monochrome does to that bark.
Converted and worked for contrast, the trunks go to near-white and everything behind them drops away, so the frame becomes a set of bright vertical lines on a dark ground. I framed to keep them all upright and to avoid any single dominant tree — the subject is the repetition, not an individual.
The undergrowth at the bottom is deliberately bright too. It stops the verticals from standing on nothing and gives the picture a base, which a frame made entirely of parallel lines badly needs.
This is the kind of image that has to be seen before it is taken, because the scene itself gives no hint of it. Learning to look at a wood and ask what it would be in black and white took me longer than any technical thing I have learned.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
