Return

It feels a bit like full circle. The Japanese Black Pine that I shot over two years ago was among the first really interesting shots of bark that I had taken. The textures, shapes, and colors I encountered were almost revelatory. In this case, I had gotten in quite close so I saw what had always been there, but what I hadn’t been able to see before.

That shot was the beginning of a major creative adventure. Wandering the Arboretum, pushing my vision to shift from forest to tree to specific elements of the bark of that individual tree, I found myself spending more and more time in smaller and smaller spaces.

Interestingly, I came upon another Japanese Black Pine and shot it without a recollection of my earlier experience. This image is similar but more complex than the earlier one. I chalk that up to several years of refining my vision and what I’ve learned about how to get what I want when I shoot or in post-processing. So even after my love affairs with the Yews, the Stewwartias, the Paperbark Maples, and so many others, it was sweet to come home to this image.