Image Autopsy - Forked Tree

Welcome to the second of my series on looking at one of my own images, how it came about, the technical details and what I think works (or doesn't work) in the image.

Circumstances - it was about 1977 and I had some holiday time during my residency in family practice and we drove 1500 miles from Edmonton to Vancouver Island (ok, so we had to take a ferry). Cathedral Grove is a preserved area of old growth forrest with some of the largest trees in Canada and was then (as it is now) a popular stop on the way across the island to get to Tofino and Long Beach on the west coast. These huge Douglas Fir and Cedar trees are up to 15 feet in diameter at the base and 250 feet tall. Sunlight makes it to the ground in splotches but fortunately this was a dull day.

I'm lucky I have this photograph because only a few hours later I tripped as I hopped and jumped around a lovely waterfall, falling forward and very cleverly just stopping the tripod and mounted camera from hitting the ground. The force however of stopping suddenly ripped the tripod socket out of the bottom of the camera and it proceded to bounce down the rocks.

I'm not sure if this huge tree even exists today - though it had been growing for 700 years when I photographed it the first time, a huge wind storm came through a few years ago, knocking down many of the trees including some of the giants.


The Search - I've been back to Cathedral Grove last Fall, and frankly it isn't easy to photograph. There's no way to capture the majesty of the trees when you are only 30 feet away at most (and you can't see them if you are further). At best you are only going to capture part of the trees. I was lucky to find trees that weren't simply vertical, that offered some diagonal lines.

The Setup - Nothing complicated here, simply a matter of manouvering around until a pleasing composition could be seen.

The Equipment - The Ikonta is in fact a very nice camera - one of few which can allow you to slip a 6X6 cm. camera into your pocket. It's manual focusing but with landscapes that's often not a big issue as in attempting to get adequate depth of field, we are using hyperfocal distances and simply guessing the distance to the tree trunk then stopping down to f22 or 32 is all you can do. Framing with this camera is a nightmare as it has to have one of the world's worst view finders, even 'more worse' for those of us with glasses. Lets's just say that framing with this camera is not n exact science.


The camera's Tessar lens is extremely sharp in the centre, slightly soft in the corners, uncoated (in my version) and produces a lovely tonal palette. Of course the lens isn't interchangeable (no decisions to make there) and square format (so I don't even have to decide which way to mount the camera). Winding on film is a matter of using the little red window in the back to observe the frame counting numbers roll by on the film paper backing (oddly, I have a new Shen Hao 6X12 cm. back for my 4X5 that works the same way - completely reliable if you aren't standing in the sun). The simplicity of my Ikonta has resulted in a number of good images over the years and I have since replaced it on ebay, though largely for nostalgic reasons as I now shoot digitally).

The film was Ilford FP3, the exposure long forgotten. Though the camera only went to f22, the f stop ring actually went past and produced a creditable f32 without enough diffraction to negate it's advantage.

Post Processing - Can't remember the developer for sure - I switched to HC-110 around that time on the advice of Fred Picker. The negative is quite thin (I have a sneaking suspicion that the smallest aperture might actually have been smaller than f32). It has been difficult to print, requiring all my skills to bring out good detail in the tree bark. The advent of scanning and digital printing has made my life a lot easier. The negative was scanned with my Epson 4870 flatbed and with various masked curve layers in Photoshop I have been able to produce a print (on matte paper) which exceded anything I was ever able to produce in the wet darkroom. This is not an uncommon phenomenon - people rescueing marginal negatives through scanning and computer work.

Image Analysis - note the splayed vertical lines caused by the small tree in the bottom left, the two big trunks, and the smaller branch on the ground angling up and right in the bottom right of the image. This fanning of lines is visually attractive, but normally runs the risk of simply allowing the eyes to wander out the top of the print, never to return. In this image, we have the matched downwards angling branches on both left and right keeping one's eyes within the print. The fallen log that runs low right to upper left behind the two big trunks counters the verticals of the two large trunks. I like the cross made by the twigs in front of the right trunk, though the twig to the left of them is less than ideal. It doesn't bother me enough to warrant removal in Photoshop, though it would certainly be an option. The foreground objects are not within the depth of field (one of the joys of using medium format is a lack of depth of field even when stopped down) but despite being out of focus, it doesn't jar the eye and frankly has never bothered me. Note that using a tilt - shift lens wouldn't help in this situation.

Despite the deficiencies in the negative, the image has rich tones throughout and the distant upper forrest is light without being glaring (the joys of a dull day).

All in all, the way the varioius parts of the image come together pleases my eye, whether they follow any compositional rules is of no importance to me. It's been 30 years since I shot this image and it still holds together for me and other people like it too so it isn't just me falsely ascribing elements to the image which are remembered from the occasion but not actually recorded in the picture - always a risk when you are in a place that really moves you.

Sales - as indicated last time, I'm making prints from these 'image autopsies' available inexpensively for purchase ($40 incl. shipping for 8.5X11) - order them as for the print of the month and specify which image it is you want. I suspect this image would look good on the new inkjet papers which mimic glossy dried matte and will experiment accordingly and sell using that which works best.