Muir woods tree

Muir woods tree

In a forest, a single tree stands isolated (in the middle of a parking lot, as it were), and breaks the dark, organic monotony of the forest with surprisingly bright twigs and branches, almost illuminating the picture with the stark contrast between the single tree and its surroundings.

The picture invites the viewer to look at the tree, contrasting it against the surrounding forest, and by the dark and light of the various trees, draws the most attention to the contrast in coloration.

As far as a message goes, I don't think the picture is much more complicated than “Look at this tree” — a message supported by the picture composition: the tree filling out the frame, and billowing out of a centered anchor. The barely hidden cars and signs at the bottom do pose a number of questions in the image — the tree is obviously not in some deep forest meadow, since there are cars surrounding it, so where is it? The presence of humans is clearly signaled, yet strongly de-emphasized.

Inspired by this, I went back to the original image (at some nuisance — I hadn't registered Aperture at this computer, and the image was hidden in my old Aperture library…), and poked at it, removing the cars, and making it a black/white image, to see what would happen:

Muir woods tree (b/w)