Luminous trees

I’m a fan of Ansel Adams’ photographs. I’ve read his own accounts of how he came to determine the exposure and development for specific images and it made my head hurt. I use my own simplified version of Adams’ zone system, based on a five-tone scale as opposed to his ten-tone scale. It ain’t the same, but it’s less stuff to remember and it works for me. I’ll try to explain it sometime.

I saw these twin trees, above, against a wooded backdrop and immediately thought of an Adams photo, like the one at the right. Adams made his trees glow by compressing the tonal range through careful exposure, development and printing. Using my five-tone system and a little help from PhotoShop, I arrived at an image I’m pretty happy with.

This is a continuation of photographs taken during some gray days in Door County last week. More to come.

By the way, if you like trees, I’ve got lots of them on this site. The Google search bar to the right can help you find them. Take some time and enjoy.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Photograph © 2005 James Jordan.