I hear...
Tangled Woods
If there is one word that could describe the woods near where I live – I think that word would be ‘complexity.’ A word that can cause a lot of problems for landscape photography. These woods are filled with knarly branches, thorny vines, logs and twigs all over the woodland floor. The entire woods is practically a floodplain, so the Clinton River, which flows through it, often brings more debris to contribute after a heavy rain. There are a lot of dead and fallen trees creating haphazard lines and intersections everywhere. As soon as summer kicks in, it then gets filled with poison ivy – which seems to be spreading more and more each year. When that happens, I am pretty much done exploring until the next fall. I consider it the perfect example of chaos in nature. Fairly easy to find a lot of macro subjects to photograph, but a lot more difficult when it comes to landscape.
I have often struggled on ways to portray the woods near where I live. After all, they say some of your best images come from the areas you know well. I know it pretty well, and conclude it is very messy. Despite trying to find simple graphical elements to concentrate on, there are always tension driving elements fighting against trying to formulate some type of harmony in a scene. As with any landscape, perhaps more so in a complex one, the light and weather conditions need to provide the harmony. There has to be something that ties all the cluttered bits together.
I wrote before about snow being a great simplifier – and I think rain & fog do a pretty adequate job as well. In these two images, the overnight rain and morning fog have helped reduce the contrast. The early spring buds have given some elements of interest I think, and particularly for the second image here, some type of textural harmony. My preference is for the second image here over the one above if I had to pick between the two. The first one certainly shows the chaos I am attempting to deal with. I tried to give it some structure by framing the spring buds between the two strong trees. I photographed this from my backyard where chaos starts just outside the back fence.
Spring textures
The second provides the soft light and textures of early spring, with soft coloring. It was photographed right at the end of my block near a trail where we usually take our dog for a walk. Interesting that I find myself staring into this particular image more than I have ever spent time at this particular spot.
When we read or hear about a scene speaking to us, perhaps it happens more often than we are able to listen. I am still trying to figure out what our woods are trying to tell me.
