Organic Shapes

For this image we had to take a picture of an organic shape, so basically anything not man made was fair game, this fits really well with my concentration of the outdoors. This photo is a close up of a large, old maple tree in my hard, several feet around. By placing my camera just above the bark and using selective focus I was able to choose where on the trunk I wanted to be in focus. I really liked the textures of the bark, the rough, almost trench looking grooves in it, which is why I chose this as my subject.

For this image I largely used repetition and selective focus on the bark, by just having the tree in the shot I ensured that all the attention was on the textures of the bark, and at the distance I took the picture selective focus was necessary. Originally I wanted to photograph the curve of a snowbank, but none of the photos came out the way I wanted them to, so I moved over to the tree.

I am fascinated with nature, and that was really the driving force behind this picture. It's easy to find organic forms outside, but because of the time of year I couldn't really take photos of things like leaves, so I had to make do with the bark. I actually feel that this is a stronger image than one I could have taken of a leaf, I really like the way this turned out.