Notes and Images from a Small Island (Practice 8 Day 5)

Having spent the previous practice period focusing on the details of the felled trees, I decide to change to a 50mm lens and capture the ghostly figures of the few trees that remain.  Whilst I would like to think that they were spared for good reason, I suspect that their survival was more about the practicalities of access for the machinery.  I am pleased however there is a small stand of trees close to the loch which hints at what has been lost, what is absent from the landscape.  I use intentional camera movement as a means of producing a mysterious, ghostly aesthetic.  I use a number of viewpoints to capture the presence of these remaining trees.

I move further up the track to a few stranded silver birch trees – their trunks fragile without the support of many more that have been felled, probably as a consequence of their proximity to larger trees.

And on to a few trees in my favourite part of the forest around the headland.

And finally, I try to capture the ‘weeping trees’ in the log piles, waiting for their final journey and destination.  Their presence alludes to the absence and presence of this sad landscape.