Chaotic Trees

I’ve been pointing my camera at bits of tangled undergrowth and mad strips of hedgerow for a few years now. Most people don’t get it. But then most people don’t get a lot of things. It’s not compulsory But if you were wondering why I bother, read on. . .

I am evidently finding something that fascinates me enough to keep exploring the subject, but what that something is, isn’t easy to define. However, I’ll give it a try.

I love the way the seeming linear madness resolves itself into a kind of crazed but beautiful compositional whole when photographed. I like the feeling of arrested movement, like a frozen explosion, or like a wave caught at the moment of breaking. I like the complexity of the overlapping lines, never allowing the eye to rest. I like the way the viewer isn’t allowed to relax into resolving the image into some kind of familiar woodland scene, although what is in the image is familiar, just unregarded. I like the negation of depth and the emphasis on pattern. I like the sheer tangled vitality of it all. . .

The act of framing, the act of choosing what should be framed and from where, turns what others might regard as an unstructured mess into a statement about nature, about beauty about photography and about me.

I don’t want to find something beautiful and photograph it. I want the photograph to be the thing of beauty.

Hope that helps Not that you were fretting about it or anything.

All photos taken with a Fuji X100 with a Nikon WC-E86 wide angle adaptor.