My personal passion project and perhaps the whole reason I got back into photography after a 10 year break from film, was to photograph the amazing landscapes and trees I have discovered after moving to Madison ten years ago. I was working as an arborist for UW-Madison and a conservation ranger for the city prior to that. I've discovered so many amazing settings that hardly anyone knew about. Summer of 2008, I bought a Pentax K200D DSLR. Why? I could use my old glass and it was weather sealed. My photographic journey began. My first collection, Madiscapes, was part of PhotoMidwest and showcased many of my favorite natural areas of Madison. Next, was my tree project. How can I capture the majestic nature of these amazing natural works of art. I shot and shot and well, was never pleased with my results. The green foliage blends into backgrounds so how do I separate my subject. How can you create depth of field shooting something that can be as tall as 100 feet? So I thought about different aspects as I honed my photography skills. What makes this tree interesting besides its massive girth or immense stature? I focused on flowering or branching patterns. Still not happy. As I started learning on the strobist site and working with off-camera flash, I thought why not use these techniques for trees. My first attempt was a large swamp white oak on the UW campus. A beautiful specimen. But attempt after attempt, my pictures failed to do it justice. Due to its location, nothing I did could serve it well. What can I do? Go at night and use lights to separate my subject from the building in the background. But I was just going to focus on the branching pattern so I needed to shoot this tree in its dormant state sans leaves.
After setting up one light camera right on the famous lower "U" limb of this tree, I decided I needed another light, camera left behind the limb to get the trunk and maybe some separation. As I've said before, setting up lights while get you noticed. Dozens of people asked what I was doing :) The first problem. Being night time, the building behind it had its lights on and was quite the distraction. By this time, I had purchased a Nikon D40 as a backup camera. Because of its unique electronic shutter, I had to use it and not my Pentax. My Pentax has a lousy 1/160 sync speed but the D40 has a 1/400 when using poverty wizards, which is all I had at the time. I dialed it up to 1/400 to kill the ambient, the opposite effect of my last post where I wanted to keep the background ambient, and was able to blackout most of the distracting lights behind it. The rest was eliminated in post. Not bad, for first time strobing, I'd say :)
The first picture on this post is of a magnolia tree taken springtime at UW-Madison arboretum's Longnecker garden. It's a magical place when the cherry trees, lilacs, and magnolias are blooming. Along with the fragrances, you feel like you are in a fairy tale. If you haven't gone, go this year. By now, I had bought a fisheye zoom for my Pentax. My focus now was on the flowers. I started shooting and of course, washed out skies. So I busted out a light on a stand and put it behind me as I was working in macro mode with my fisheye and max out the shutter speed to get some sky in the background. I had fun experimenting that day as well as many of the other photographers shooting out there which was as far as the eye could see :) Some came up to me and asked about my lighting setup and how they'd never thought to do something like that. I think it created quite the image :)
Today, I got word that my tree project was accepted for 2010 City of Madison ARTspace exhibit. I want this to be more than just a photo exhibit and am going to include stories about each tree whether historic or optimal time to view, location and create a little guide pamphlet so people can see these majestic wonders on their own and maybe even give them a hug as I have.
