BRANCHING OUT

1. Branching out at a city park in Washington State.

Some years ago I realized that I was photographing a lot of tree branches. I wasn’t creating a project about trees, I was simply attracted to branches. A lifelong love of plants wasn’t enough to explain why branches kept showing up on my SD cards. Maybe it was because of my surroundings: I had moved from a New York City building with street and water views to a Seattle-area apartment on the corner of a building that backed up to a tree-filled ravine. The new window views were layered green walls of Douglas firs, Big-leaf maples, and Western red cedars growing together in a verdant chaos. When a job in Seattle began taking up most of my time, I could still make photos right from the deck of the apartment. That was my focus: teasing apart patterns in the entangled branches.

Pacific Northwest habitats and plants are very different from the East coast environment I knew for over half a century. I wanted to understand what I was looking at, sort out the names, and learn how this new region worked. Recognizing differences in tree branches was part of the learning process. I got to know the elegant sway of redcedar branches, the drooping tips and fine texture of Western hemlocks, and the saturated colors of Madrone trees. The ubiquitous Douglas fir tree was the landscape’s ragged backdrop along highways and in parks. In exposed settings, its contorted, weather-battered branches caught my attention. And there were so many lichens! A single tree limb could be sheathed in an astounding variety of them in this lichen-happy environment.

2. Lichen-covered twigs at a preserve in Washington.

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But there’s more to it than that – what is it about branches? Something ancient connects humans to trees. Trees have offered us shelter since we first began walking around on two legs. They provide food, materials for building, and clothing. In a primal way, we are akin to trees, with our trunks and appendages. Our blood finds its way around using branches and our minds function via vast networks of branching neurons. We even organize our lives using branches – branches of government, taxonomy, genealogy, religion, and a host of other phenomena. The act of branching seems fundamental to life. Something starts out in one direction and splits in two, finding more space to occupy and enabling more to be done. Repeat that a thousand times and you’re going somewhere, you’re connecting to more than before. It works the other way, too: smaller branches feed larger ones. Systems on our planet depend on it.

I could cite example after example of how branches operate in life but I don’t want to forget aesthetics. That’s what I come back to – the basic beauty of trees. With their endless variety of forms, colors, and textures, tree branches stop my gaze and demand my attention, time and time again.

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3. A city park in Washington.
4. The ravine behind my former apartment in Washington.
5. A peeling Madrone branch at a state park in Washington.
6. A national monument in Arizona.
7. A national park in Washington.
8. A state park in California.
9. Bigleaf maple branches are covered with moss and ferns at a city park in Washington.
10. Leiden, Netherlands as seen through branches at a historic landmark.
11. Tree branches screen the view from a street corner in Manhattan.
12. An old willow at a city park in Washington.
13. A Red elderberry branch between willow branches at a city park in Washington.
14. A Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) at a city park in Washington.
15. A national park in Washington, elevation 5477 ft./1669 m.
16. A national forest in Washington. Did you know that conifers in alpine regions grow tall and thin and often have drooping branches so heavy snow will slide off the tree?
17. Southern live oaks (Quercus virginiana) with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) on a roadside in South Carolina. Spanish “moss” is actually a flowering plant in the same family as pineapples. It’s not Spanish, either!
18. A state park in Washington
19. A state park in Washington.
20. A street corner in Antwerp, Belgium. Pollarding, the style of pruning that you see here, originated in Europe. It keeps trees from getting too big in urban environments.
21. Looking down on Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) branches and Sword ferns from a canopy walk at a city zoo in California. Redwoods have two kinds of leaves: peripheral ones for photosynthesis (seen here) and axial leaves, which specialize in absorbing water. This helps them adapt to California’s dry summers.
22. Living and dead Joshua trees in a national park in California. Not actually a tree, Yucca brevifolia is a long-lived Mohave desert succulent, now endangered in parts of its range due to fire, climate change, and invasive grasses.

23. A willow branch in spring at a national historic site in New York.
24. Douglas fir trees screen the sunset at a state park in Washington.

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86 comments

    • The strange thing is that the effect in that photo came from wildfires burning many miles away. The smoke blew here and settled into the air for days. It was oppressive but it created some interesting photo ops. Thank you and have a great week!

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  3. I am trying to stay caught up but likely that won’t last. 🙂 Jumped right on this one though. 🙂

    The first reminds me of our favorite Hiroshige painting, “Boy and Mount Fuji” which was a frequent Caspari card choice when Mary Beth and I were exchanging daily letters before moving in together. A large print of it now hangs over our bed. Yours may be missing the boy, flute, and Mt. Fuji, but it has the branch and a similar air and makes me think of our print. 🙂

    This is a great collection of branching images. I would not have guessed that #21 was a redwood although I have never seen a redwood close up either. I’d love to be walking the path in #17. All are nice shots, Lynn. You do get around. I am too much a homebody, I guess. 🙂

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    • What a fortuitous association! Thanks for linking (this WP theme has a frustrating font color that doesn’t show linked texts well).
      We’re playing leapfrog when we try to catch up on one another’s blogs, right? 😉 Thanks so much for visiting – I do appreciate it. Unfortunately, the hazy look of the image was due to smoke from eastern WA wildfires that blew over here. and I hope you’re doing well. Lemonade from lemons…
      If you ever get a chance to do a canopy walk, they are really worth it – the view from above is fascinating. In this case, it showed a pattern in the Redwood branches that wasn’t nearly as evident from the ground. Thank you for conserving energy by staying close to home – I will feel less guilty next time I take a long trip. 😉
      (Are you counting the days to Ladyslipper time?)

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  4. Trees make fantastic subjects for photography as you’ve demonstrated so well here. Such variety to the types of images you can create! Picking out favourites isn’t easy but I do love the drama of 7 and 22, the delicacy of 13 (it looks somewhat Japanese) and the ‘symmetry’ in 18 🙂

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  5. The time you spent in NYC may have given you a greater appreciation for trees and plants. In any event, you have realized your admiration and have made it your art. These are very nice, Lynn, especially #23 snf #9.

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    • That’s an interesting idea – although I grew up in the suburbs (including outside of Syracuse, you may remember). Nature was always really important and I hung onto every bit I could find when I lived in the city. It’s always good to hear from you, Ken, I hope all is wonderful in Webster!

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  6. As important as trees are to us, it should be the most natural thing to like them. The forest has always felt like a safe place, protection from rain and wind. My fascination with the different ways trees grow, the shape of the tree crown, how they take into account or compete with each other, never ends. Sometimes you just get caught up in how they form lines or create gap shapes. I understand you completely!

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    • Thank you, Howard – that photo was made with a 45mm prime lens at f1.8 & (as always) a MFT camera. I like using that lens open wide in the winter because it’s so dark around here then! Black and white may have enhanced that three-dimensional feeling.

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  9. You had me from that very first image – what perfect framing. And a big YES to “In a primal way, we are akin to trees, with our trunks and appendages. Our blood finds its way around using branches and our minds function via vast networks of branching neurons.” And trees even communicate and cooperate among themselves. Your tree photos range from the exquisite to the incredible and amazing. I have been known to stake out a couple of particularly lovely branches over the years from my kayak in hopes that a Heron would complete the scene, but I have never seen the vast array that you share with us. Wonderful commentary and photos!

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    • What a delightfully sweet comment, thank you. That’s funny about staking out branches in hopes that a heron would land there. Yesterday I saw a lovely scene of one in a shallow bay with everything pale and a little misty – you can probably picture it – but there’s also a refinery in the background that lets steam off from tall stacks. That actually makes it more interesting. And the rookery is nearby – we have eggs! 🙂 Thanks again –

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      • You’re welcome and EGGS!! How wonderful, thanks for the update. You’re about six weeks ahead of us – if this were a “normal” year (and who knows what normal means any more). A Heron in a pale and misty bay does sound lovely and you’re right that a refinery would add a lot of visual interest. Just imagine the captions for a photo of that scene. Congrats on the Eggs!!

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        • You’re right about our climate differences. Speaking of eggs, do you know of the British nature artist/videographer Robert E. Fuller? He takes such joy in eggs laid by the Owls on his property that you’d almost think he produced the eggs, himself. His Barn Owl, Tawny Owl and Little Owl videos are especially endearing.

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  11. You couldn’t have picked a more favorite subject, Lynn. Your collection is diverse and showcases how important and astonishing trees are. Your monochromes are stunning – the redwood shot, especially caught my eye – wouldn’t have recognized it! Love the greens in your
    Ravine image and the wonderful silhouette screen of branches in the sunset image and in your final Douglas firs. Fine series! 🙂

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    • Important and astonishing, amen. The redwood foliage is surprising, isn’t it? Thank you for taking the time to scroll through this rather long post, Jane. 😉 There were so many more! I know you could do a dozen posts about trees, too. Thanks for the good words and have a great day!

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  16. An Ode to the Branches; I’m in! 🙂 I love the ‘undeepness’ and Intimacy in nr2; the weird; almost silhouettes in nr7; the movement of the Jungle in nr9; the double layer in nr13; the color-contrast in nr18; the geometry in nr21; and the Dead one in nr22. And I agree on: ‘Amen to all of that.’.. Greeting for both; and see you, Lynn!

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    • Oh, thank you for so many reactions, Harrie. That’s very nice of you. It’s so many photos even though I eliminated a lot along the way! The park in #9 IS like a jungle – I miss that place – it’s near where I lived before we moved here. #22 could fit into your series of “fallen heroes.” Just 4 years ago we were in the Netherlands – we hope we can do it again sometime! Until then, greetings back to you from both of us. 🙂

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  17. Because I love branches and roots, I think your photos are beautiful, starting with the first one. What wonders does nature offer us?
    She knows how to draw and write beautiful messages with her branches, twigs, leaves, shoots and everything else.
    Thanks so much for sharing!

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  18. We meant to stop at the “Trees of Mystery” in Northern California on our trip for the higher views and perspectives in the redwoods, but alas, our timing was too tight, once more…

    A lovely collection of photos, and I know I don’t comment often enough, but I always enjoy seeing not just “your eye at work” but also how you develop the individual images.

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    • That trip was epic, Alex, I don’t know how you packed as much as you did into it! Another time for the redwoods. 🙂
      It’s good to read your thoughts…so many ways to go with any given image…and so much to see, always. Thanks, Alex, I appreciate hearing from you!

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  19. Lynn, what a lovely essay, both pictures and words. I like the statement “teasing apart patterns in the entangled branches,” and putting this in the context of all the networks and interconnectedness of life. Really enjoy the dark silhouettes in 7, 19 & 24 and especially 8, where dark areas of the shadow portraits really convey the branches joining into myriad other places and into connections that we cannot always discern.
    And what a wonderfully varied album, lovely delicacy in 12 & 23, crisp geometry in 21, a poignant memorial and fresh beginning in 15. Cool otherworldly feelings in 9 and 22, amazingly lush in the former and somber, almost devastated feeling in the latter.
    Well, I like the others too but enough gushing, you’ll get a swelled head 🙂
    Here’s a “branch” I learned about years ago, sitting in a big old-time hotel – some old gent ordered “bourbon and branch,” and the bartender brought him a shot and a tiny glass pitcher of water, almost doll-size. I looked it up and “branch water” I guess means from a nice, pure stream without a lot of minerals or iron in it, like what you need to make whiskey, although I’ve never heard anybody call a creek or stream a “branch,” but it makes sense the tributaries would be like branches. Well anyway, excellent album, definitely you should take a bough!

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    • Your close attention is very much appreciated – with the test and photos. It’s nice that you mention the darkness of #8 because Joe (I always ask him to take a look & proofread before I post) said maybe that one was too dark. I lightened it the tiniest, tiniest bit and kept it in. The variety was a little hard to rein in (as was the quantity!) so it’s good to hear that you appreciate it. Don’t worry about swelled heads – keep on givin’! 😉
      So, bourbon and branch – well, that’s a new one – and good on you for remembering that moment! Well told, too!
      Taking three boughs…

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  20. Beautiful! I’m definitely a tree-lover, and abundance of trees is much of what I love about Washington state. I was astounded to see the sheer number of trees that surround my town when I had the privilege to take a helicopter ride over the area.
    Your admiration and careful aesthetic untangling is evident in the photo of the trees in the ravine behind your former apartment. It’s my favorite shot of all in this collection, though several are perhaps more exotic.
    You’ve capture such variation and wonder. Thanks for sharing!

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    • I remember your helicopter ride – that must have been really wonderful. How nice to hear that you’re drawn to that photo from behind the apartment. So many hours (cumulatively) were spent regarding that scene. 🙂 There’s a big difference between the flora there and here – it’s that much drier here. We don’t have Vine maples! Strange, right? But it’s all good and it’s all beautiful and I thank you very much. 🙂

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  21. I thought a bit about branches.
    Branches are everywhere.
    I remembered a lesson about hoarfrost needles.
    Hoarfrost needles are to be found at a temperature a few degrees below zero degrees and water vapour concentration in the atmosphere very high (relative humidity above 90%).
    The water molecules settle on cold objects and thus contribute to the ice crystal. They prefer to dock to existing crystals. As a result, water vapor molecules are lost to the environment and further growth of the needle slows down. Therefore, the crystal grows into regions where the water vapour concentration has not yet decreased, i.e. from the origin to the outside.
    I had this information from a physicist, J. Schlichting.

    So branches are to be found because of different reasons.

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  22. 1. Branching out at a city park in Washington State.

    Branch in the near and in the distance 🙂
    Wellknown theme of yours

    2. Lichen-covered twigs at a preserve in Washington.
    Vast net till the background, but open.

    3 and 4:
    Fülle – wealth. A friend of mine once used the word !Fülle” a lot. She didn’t mean money but the bunch of visual and sensual richness she always liked.

    6
    Somewhat archaic.

    7
    Life is strong!

    9
    We have such moss-sceneries here too.

    12
    Like fog

    15
    I like this very much

    🙂

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  24. What a beautiful post! I love the aesthetics of trees and branches as well as you. Everything about them is nice, but your interpretation of it makes many of the branches even nicer. So many wonderful pictures! No, I can’t count them, there are too many that comes first 🙂 21 is a fascinating view, this pattern! Astonishing. I love the details, the madrone tree bark of course and the branches with lichen and moss, the special light situations, the delicacy, your compositions. Did I forget something ;-)? Your thoughts about branches and trees and how we find them in our daily life are interesting. Often we don’t notice the way they influence us. When I think of it, it reminds me of a computer system for example with its server, platforms and folder, that works like branches. There is much more to find, than we are aware of. By the way, there is the word pruning again 😉 Every time I stumble over it. In Low-German there is a word called prünen. It means something like sticking, sewing. When I look in the online dictionary there is a pruning saw. I am almost sure, there is a relation, but etymology over 2 languages is too difficult for me 😉 Fine post Lynn, I love it!
    Ah, and a quote, sligthly changed: a life without trees is possible, but meaningless! No, I couldn’t live without trees either!!!

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    • 🙂 I would be surprised if you didn’t like #21. It was wonderful to be up there in the forest canopy, looking down, across, and up at the trees. That’s interesting about pruning and prunen – they must be related. When I look up the etymology for the English word it seems that it’s unclear but may be related to a 14th-century word describing birds preening their feathers or meaning to dress oneself carefully. So there’s a possible connection to the German prunen and sewing. But I don’t know, that’s for sure! Thanks for your comment and enthusiasm – I kept paring down (there’s another word that could be related!!) the number of images. I have so many! Have a good evening!

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      • Your description makes sense to me and it seems the word has a connection. It is not far from dressing oneself to sewing etc. At least for me 😉 Paring, I heard of it. I need another dictionary for etymology in English 😉

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  26. So much magic here Lynn. I too love trees and am endlessly drawn to them on my forest walks – the shapes, the lichens, the mosses. And their interconnectedness. On our mostly daily hike there’s a marker for us. Whoever sees it first calls out Six trees! It’s a maple with six trunks, all of them touching and coming from the same place.
    Your opening photo, and #5 both thoroughly charmed me.
    Alison

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    • We’re lucky to have trees that often are draped with so much moss and lichens – I love that. I love it when people get to know certain trees – great story, thank you! And I can think of one particular Bigleaf maple right now with huge, multiple trunks. So cool. They are amazing trees! Thanks for your thoughts!

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  27. No branch is just a branch. Your beautiful pictures show that very impressively! What an incredible variety! I share this love. I can never get enough of it.
    I didn’t know that the Sequoia has two different types of leaves. Very ingenious system!
    And to compare trees with us humans. I like that! ☺️

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    • I didn’t know that about Sequoias, either – I just came across it when I was looking something up online. There are millions of things like those special leaves that we don’t know about – there is so much to see and learn. I’m glad you enjoyed the photos, Simone, and thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend!

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    • Who wouldn’t be enthusiastic about trees, right? You’re privileged to live where there’s some native forest left – so much of it has vanished across the globe. I’m glad that bit of land has you to care for it, Julie! Thanks for your thoughts!

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  29. Wow, beautiful images! Long ago I started a Lightroom folder with tree and forest images, a project now forgotten. Your post inspired me to keep working on that folder and maybe post some of the images in the future, thanks!

    If I may, in the light of image no.7, quote the greatest poet in this galaxy, Eddie Vedder:
    Do you see the way that tree bends?
    Does it inspire?
    Leaning out to catch the sun’s rays.
    A lesson to be applied.

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    • Goran, it’s great to hear from you and I can’t tell you how good it is to know that this post might inspire you to do more with your own photos. I admire your work and hope that you put together at least one post of your tree and forest images. I will wait patiently. 😉
      And thank you for Eddie Vedder’s words, what a surprise. You know, he’s from Seattle, which is just about 1 1/2 hours south of here. Maybe it’s kind of a northern nature sensibility that he has and you do, too.

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  33. How beautiful is the soft, almost imperceptible colourfulness of this collection!  Trees are so well suited to be used as a metaphor for our biography, which you do here, albeit not in historical order but rather linked together through formal references, an elegant choreography.

     Let me list my favourites:

     #2 with the cotton balls of lichen tangles leading us from the clearly defined branches into the beautiful blur.  Like life exposes only a few areas clearly to our consciousness, leaving the rest indistinct.
     #6 makes the strange knob in the branch jump right out of the frame at me, like some alien animal or tree spirit.  You brought incredible depth here.  # 7 follows directly from this, is like an echo with a different focal length.
     #9 depicts a dreamlike green jungle.  Here, as in some of the other images, e.g. #3 and #4, I again see that insanely vexing play between focus and blur that I find so typical of your images (I have no idea how you do it!).
     For the same reason my heart flies to #12 too, those layers of colors, light, sharpness – ah!
     The elderberry branch in # 13 floats against the veiled background and is simply beautiful.
    Do those branches in #18 both belong to a Madrone tree?  They echo each other so well.

     You send your guests home in a friendly manner with the last picture and its romantic evening atmosphere.

    Once again I admire how artistically and lovingly you compose your series of pictures, you open and close, you connect and contrast, you guide the viewer step by step through a festival of

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    • The last photo is from a place I go often, especially late in the day. It faces west so sunsets are always nice there and I’m lucky that it’s less than 10 minutes from home. You’re right about the branches in #18, that’s a Madrone tree. The branch in the foreground may have been burned. Rain brought the colors out. We often have drizzly, off-and-on rainy days that allow me to sneak out during a lull in the rain. Being retired helps!!
      So, I drive you crazy with the various focus techniques, good! 😉 Separating a subject in the foreground from the background was what I wanted to do more than anything with photography. I couldn’t do it with the primitive point-and-shoot cameras I had when I was younger. I was so thrilled when I could control that! The desire to focus in one place is why I favor one lens more than the others – it’s an f2.8 macro lens. I often use it at a normal range. I love to shoot at low apertures to blur the background and now, with the ability to select a subject and invert it in Lightroom, I can emphasize the effect. I’ve found that not only blurring the texture or clarity of the background works but darkening the highlights and cooling the colors also quiets the background. In #12 I used the radial filter to blur the edges of the frame, too. In #13 I think there were branches very close to the camera lens that the camera saw through, giving some blur in front as well as behind the branch that I focused on. So many ways to play with focus! This was a long post; thank you for sticking with it to the end. 🙂

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      • That’s precisely what I love in my new camera: it can be opened to an aperture of 2.0, which is great. But it has a wide angle lens with 23 mm fix on APSC sensor, that makes it difficult to separate the foreground. But while reading your answer, I remembered my f 2.8 macro lens with 105 mm. I should use that one again for a while on my Canon camera. Some rainy day, I’ll try to copy your LR processing and send the outcome to you 😀

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        • The Canon lens sounds similar to the one I was talking about, which is 60mm – but is equivalent to 120mm on a regular camera. I hope you have fun and wish you get just the right number of rainy days to keep the garden going strong. 🙂

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        • I ave forgotten to mention, that it is a Sigma lens.
          These days, we have a bit cloudy, warm days, and a gentle portion of rain in the evenings and nights. Just right for the vegetables and me 🙂

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  34. Great series of photos, Lynn. The first photo captured the spirit of this post so well, and it got me thinking immediately of the large number of photos I have where the main subject is a branch (or leaning tree) is highlighted. The images you have throughout this post describes the feeling of the surrounding and nature within this one look/snapshot of time, the feeling I always hope to capture but seldom do 🙂 Beautifully done.

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    • When you think about it, there are always themes and subjects that recur in one’s photography or other creative work. I happened to notice this one. I bet there are many other subjects that I’m not aware of yet. I’m sure you have many recurring themes, too, and I hope you have time to tease them out and play with them. Your comment about the photos conveying the feeling of my surroundings at one particular time and place is wonderful to hear – the more I can do that, the better. Concentrating on one small geographic area probably helps. I’m sure you convey that feeling a lot more often than you think! Thanks for stopping by, Randall. I hope all’s well with you!

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    • To choose #22 as a lover of trees well, I guess that speaks to your understanding of the complex cycles of nature. Joshua Tree NP is a wonderful landscape to spend in. I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Lynn, thanks for stopping by! (I’m trying to remember the name of the tree in your video with the white dangling bell-shaped flowers…what is that again? Carolina Silvebell, is that it?)

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  36. This is a theme that suits your work very well! I especially like the silhouettes, #19 and #24. I look for these types of compositions while out with my camera too. They are especially pleasing with a colorful sky background as you have shown.

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