Two Trees Together

The survival of these two weather-damaged pine trees set against healthy spruces in the background is what gives your photo its juxtaposed strength. This is a stark, almost minimalist composition making good use of the snowy Yellowstone Park territory. Combining to make a ‘V’ sign towards the other trees the lifeless trunks seem to be saying ‘We’re here, we’re alive and we’re staying put’.

These two poplar trees growing on the Val D’Orcia hillside were the smallest entered into this challenge yet have one of the biggest impacts. One’s eye is immediately drawn to the tiny silhouettes resting on the horizon because there is nothing else in the landscape to spoil the view. Your well-balanced composition proves that big isn’t necessarily better but that small can be more than beautiful.

The single most important aspect of entering a photo competition is to make the entry stand out from the crowd and you’ve certainly done that with your infrared treatment. What might have been a good but ordinary photo has become an out of the ordinary piece of surreal art. The pink parent standing alongside their growing infant on a field of lavender has imaginatively enhanced your chromatic dream.

This is a conceptually clever composite combined to create a creative configuration. Your stand-out idea of two trees joined together, looking like they’re one tree growing above and below ground, secured my top ten position the moment I saw it. I like that you didn’t take the easy root by using a mirror image for the underground tree. Originality always rises to the top especially if it’s grounded with a strong, down-to-earth conceptualisation.

We’re used to seeing these distinctive tree shapes in the background when watching television safari programmes. It makes a pleasant change for them to take centre stage in an African landscape photograph. A Maissaimarra bereft of animal’s has given your two trees a well-earned starring role. Facing in opposite directions it seems as if your two trees are on the lookout for predatory giraffes who’ll eat as much foliage off the trees as their long necks will allow.

This landscape photograph is full of harmonious partnerships. Two trees growing on two separate fields under two white clouds helps to maintain the photo’s balanced parity. The fatter tree is below a bigger cloud on top of a greater expanse of field whilst the thinner companion is under a tiny cloud on a smaller area of an adjoining field. The clever dividing line between the fallow and green fields leads the eye straight up towards the two centred trees growing on a harmonious horizon.

The simple beauty of this muted, colour landscape is that you’ve managed to find two grouped trees to make them look like a lone tree. Your minimalist construction is helped by being perfectly aligned along the invisible thirds. If I was being ultra pedantic, I would have cropped out the two infringing areas at both extreme edges of the drystone wall, but that doesn’t deter from your photo being a picture of delicate tranquility.

Your photograph has managed to capture an artistic mood with its pastel-coloured palette. The skeleton tree, covered in wind-swept snow, looks like a highlighted pen and ink drawing set against a watercolour painted sky. The fully-leafed tree serves as a neat counterbalance to the leafless foreground tree. Your successful landscape illustration would work equally as well hanging in an art gallery as it would displayed at a photo exhibition.