Comments on: one way to photograph a tree

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:27:58 +0000

Tina, I saw a set-up shot where you could some assistants holding the big background sheet. Its definitely a photo you have to plan ahead for!

Jo, well, talk about great minds… Your photo uses some of the same thought processes, for sure, but your results are so different. I really like what you’ve done!

By: jo

jo — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:41:44 +0000

Hiya James,
I honestly hadn’t seen this or known of it when I did my tree photo for this month’s contest yesterday.
There was me thinking I had an original thought
Mind you, I would have found fault with the creases in the top corners of the sheet. That is why I rejected cloth in favour of MDF. And I didn’t want a rectangle.
GGW stretches our mind at the minute.

By: [ Lost in the Landscape ] » background check

[ Lost in the Landscape ] » background check — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:15:08 +0000

[…] last post has me thinking more about the backgrounds that plants […]

By: tina

tina — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:44:26 +0000

He is definitely a photographer that goes to great lengths to capture his subject. Couldn’t imagine how big his backgrounds must be. The trees have nice silhouettes and the background does show it well.

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:42:09 +0000

James, the more I think of garden photography, the more I think that the gardens and the photos of them inhabit different worlds. The gardens seem more time-based, like music, and the photos of them more about the frozen instant, like a two-dimensional artwork.

Pomona, I like your comments about how even looking at something involves acts of editing out things you don’t look at, even when they’re right there in your field of vision. I also feel the same way about garden photos that are too perfect–What garden is without the occasional browned leaf or dropped petals?

Ryan, I can see how architecture can provide the same sort of background. Most weekdays I walk past a new building where they spent all their money on the inside and left the outside blank walls. The trees and big plants that are filling in against the walls help hid the architectural gaffes and really do, like you point out, gain from the fact that you can really focus on the single plants against the bare walls.

By: ryan

ryan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:01:51 +0000

The photos are great. My thought was that this is why we plant a specimen tree every time we get a good wall to provide a backdrop behind it. Tree #13 looks both ordinary and elegant to me.

By: Pomona Belvedere

Pomona Belvedere — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:27:58 +0000

Well, but actually even LOOKING at the garden means we are in a different reality than the plants, birds, or even other people in it: our brains and senses “edit” what we see, and we edit that even further by what we choose to look at and the opinions we have about it. I don’t have a problem with photographs being lies in that sense, though I hate tarted-up photos that make plants look like Hollywood starlets with that surgically perfect skin. That make plants into a commodity.

These photos make that choice of vision super obvious. I like that, and though this is not a way I’d choose to portray it, they make me look at trees in yet another new way. I would hate to be the one lugging and setting up that background, though.

By: James Golden

James Golden — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:44:33 +0000

Yes, yes. Lies. I struggle with the fact that photographs show an entirely different “reality” from the actual experience of a garden (or tree, etc.).

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:13:48 +0000

Town Mouse, pen and ink would be easier for sure. I guess I like the utter ridiculousness of what this photographer has done–and they’re striking resulting images.

Lynn, funny that you thought of Avedon, because that’s who I thought of as well. His are portraits, and I guess that you could also think of these tree photos in the same way. And both photographers aren’t ashamed to reveal the artifice of their project by letting you see that the backdrop is just a backdrop.

Barbara, I like your comment about photos being carefully constructed lies. Just think what better lies we could all tell if we carried thirty-foot-square backdrops out into the wilds along with our cameras…

By: Barbara E

Barbara E — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:40:08 +0000

Great posting. I am aware of the difficulty of photographing plants in the wild — and in gardens — though I don’t approach this from an artist’s perspective. My photographs are intended to teach gardeners how a given plant or an arrangement of plants look in a garden, but they are actually “lies” because I carefully edit the scene. I love Myoung-Ho Lee’s approach — to me the result is so clean and beautiful. It says “look at me.”