Three Trees

This trio of delicate, wind-shaped trees look as if they’re dancing to the rhythm of the sea. Since you captured them on a beach walk I mistook the textured background wall as undulating sands created by the tide going out to sea - it makes your composition appear more like a landscape than a still life. There’s an additional sense of family in your photo with proud parents watching their offspring playing on the beach. More strength to your minimalistic photo that it can be interpreted in so many ways.

You’ve cleverly used the Australian lake’s distant shore as a horizontal dividing line between your trees and their reflections. You’ve continued the central theme by placing the largest tree slap, bang in the middle of your minimalistic waterscape. Both of these thoughtfully positioned items have given your photo a quintessential sense of balance. In any other challenge the two small trees to the right might appear irrelevant but for this contest their supporting role is perfectly meaningful.

These three willow trees growing out of the mounds of earth echoing the three mountain peaks give your photo a wonderful sense of balance. Using vignetted colour from the base of the photo rising towards the black and white apex is an unusually creative way to lead a viewer through a composition. That’s the reason why I think that this photo works far better than your alternative mono version entered into the challenge.

I’ve always liked baobab trees. They remind me of the naivety of children’s paintings with the thick trunks completely out of proportion and small branches disproportionately resting on the top of the trees. You’ve caught them beautifully silhouetted against a plain blue and orange vignetted sky to complete your easy-on-the-eye composition. Geometrically you’ve centred the baobabs on the dominant middle tree and perfectly positioned the other two according to the rule of thirds. This is a clear and succinct, no fuss, interpretation of the brief - well done.

There is something so right yet so wrong about this composition for this challenge. I don’t mind that it goes against the rules in that the three trees aren’t the dominant feature and that they’re subtly presented as wispy specimens. In my opinion had you cropped out the two outside windows so the photo became portrait shaped the emphasis would have been more on the trees and less on the windows. The three windows would then have helped draw attention to the fact that they were echoing three trees. I've highly recommended your shot because you've gambled with something completely different from the norm.

If ever there was a photo that makes me want to visit the Masai Mara then this is it. You’ve captured the tranquility of a glorious sunset with the animals peacefully grazing along the horizon. The white sun fills the void left in your panoramic photograph but it’s the three different-sized acacia trees that absolutely make your silhouetted composition. Your idea of heaven has become my idea of heaven - now when is the next flight out to Africa?

Isolating three trees in an aerial view can’t have been an easy thing to do whether taken by a drone or from a fast moving aeroplane. The roundness of the trees and their shadows work well against your very linear and graphic composition. This standout photograph is unique due to its unusual viewpoint and I like the inclusion of cars disappearing off the top of shot. I think the photograph might have worked slightly better had you cropped the photo to leave the same amount of cars as the number of trees. This would have resulted in the path disappearing aesthetically into the right-hand corner of your aerial shot. Nevertheless this is one of the most creatively-taken angles in the challenge.

I love the serenity of this pastel-coloured, almost minimalistic, landscape photo. Taken with a zoom lens on an overcast day in the Everglades has helped to flatten the perspective of these three trees. The odd compositional shape (possibly due to cropping out unnecessary trees) works in your favour as do the fragmented lead in lines of the grey watery foreground. Although creatively simple, there’s nothing lazy about your hazy-crazy-day(s) of summer.

I never tire of seeing these skeleton trees in the dead marsh area of the Namibian desert. Your composition of the 650 year old scorched but surviving trees is perfectly placed along the yellow twenty-five percent of your photo. The emphasis on the V-shaped foreground tree against the red hills gives your photo its strength by taking up half of the composition. The two dead camel thorn trees in the background complete your very well-balanced composition taken in a place that is high up on my travel wish list.

Absolutely no need for colour here with your excellent mono shot capturing every sharp sinew of a frosty landscape. The obvious stars of the composition are the three winter willows growing on the side of the River Stour. The haw frost on the foreground grass serves as an icy lead at the same time as underlining the objects of your photograph. A very low ISO has ensured you captured a milky river and sky to contrast with your silhouetted trees and their mirrored reflections.

The steam coming from the Mammoth Springs on the edge of Wyoming has given your photo a wonderful background marbling effect. Your abstract composition is neatly perforated by the remains of three barely visible lodgepole pines surviving the humid atmosphere. One tiny criticism is that my eye kept returning to the little twig peeking up from the baseline - but that’s just me being ultra pedantic Your impressionistic photo is so unique that it automatically made my top ten for its stunning visuality