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There's a popular saying where I come from - 'You can't see the wood for the trees', meaning that one's attention is so focused on the details of a problem that the big picture is lost.
However, when photographing woodland is the aim, this saying is usually turned on its head, as an effort to see as much of the scene as possble in one's composition results in a jumbled mess that has neither form nor meaning.
To overcome this compositional overload I will focus on just one tree, or a small group of trees, that have something striking about them, and which stand out from the background clutter.
This could be colour, shape, texture or the way the light is falling on the leaves, anything that draws attention and provides a focal point.
I photographed these particular trees while Liz and I were out hiking the Baldwin Trail, near Sedona, Arizona during our vacation there. I wasn't expecting such verdant growth in what I thought would be a semi-desert area, and was very pleasantly suprised to find a plethora of interesting, weather beaten trees everywhere I looked.
There was so much vegetation it took some time to find a couple of views that allowed particular trees to stand out, but the shape and colour of this tree shown here provided the strong compositions I was after to create an interesting image.
Filename - tree broken 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/30sec @ f11, ISO200
Location - Sedona, Arizona
This image - 581x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Polarising filter used to enhance colours.
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