The Tree Project. January.

This year I'm photographing trees through the seasons. The working title is The Tree Project 2020. I'm not sure how it'll evolve but I hope that will make it all the more interesting.

For The Tree Project in January I took photos of trees in the thick fog! The light was terrible but I really enjoyed capturing the winter trees in such in such atmospheric conditions. I don’t ever remember shooting in fog before but I really enjoyed the experience.

This is one of my favourite trees and one I intend to revisit each month. I think it's a field maple. I know it's a very popular tree to capture as I see it make appearances often across social media sites! I'm unsure whether to describe it as perfectly imperfect or imperfectly perfect. Either way, don't you think it's beautiful and so full of character?

I knew that the project would spark other ideas aside from taking still photos. As I wandered around the trees in the mist I had thoughts of shooting a film with atmospheric music and so that’s what I attempted!

Here is a short film that I shot and edited on my iPhone.

I’ve set up a separate page for my tree project and I hope you’ll pop back to see how it develops over the year. I reckon that this is my way of declaring an intention and being held accountable!

Inspiration Rises from the Mist

Towards the end of 2019 I was driving along the main road from Hartington way in the Peak District towards the town of Ashbourne where I intended stopping for lunch. I especially like to buy local Staffordshire oatcakes when I’m in the area.

I noticed every now and again wisps of mist drifting across the distant landscape. I made a spur of the moment decision to take a detour towards the valley between Thorpe and Ilam. Something was pulling me there. As I passed through the village of Thorpe and started to drop down towards Ilam I was rewarded with the most glorious mist rolling across the valley.

The mist was swirling gently around the bare branches of the winter trees.

I parked up quickly, grabbed the lead of my little dog Ted in one hand and my camera in the other. Poor Ted only has little legs and I don’t think he was very impressed at being walked across a muddy field. Anyway, he’s my photo buddy and faithful friend and fortunately by now he’s becoming more used to my adventures. .

This was a scene I would expect to see early morning. However it was midday and I could hardly believe my luck. I remember filming a spontaneous video expressing my sheer joy at witnessing the light and trees. It was very rough and unedited but I wanted capture the raw emotion and post it for a group of creative friends on Facebook. I knew instinctively that my little tribe would ‘get it’ and of course yes they did! With hindsight I’m quite embarrassed at how amateurish it was. However it set the ball in motion for me to learn video editing. So that scrappy little film was the start of a new project.

But it didn’t end there. Over the next couple weeks, and after bouncing ideas off my creative buddies, I decided that trees would be the focus of a new project for 2020. And so it was from these trees in the Peak District that my Tree Project 2020 has evolved. The intention is that I photograph trees over the course of twelve months and so take time to observe the changing seasons. I have one particular tree in mind but I don’t intend to narrow the project down to just the one tree. The project will be a celebration of interesting trees and creativity inspired by these trees. I already have a few ideas but I definitely don’t want to stick to a rigid plan.