PICTURES OF NORWAY

The Dead Trees

Weathered bare trees standing beneath moving clouds

PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT · THE JOURNEY TO AN IMAGE

A dead tree does not disappear from the landscape at once. It remains standing, sometimes without leaves or crown, with only a few branches left. Then its outline stands out all the more clearly against the sky. These forms fascinated me because every trunk carries traces of a time gone by.

Broken branches, weathered wood, and bare trunks tell of wind and weather. With long exposures, the sky began to move around them. Clouds became soft trails while the trees remained motionless. To me, they seemed like silent figures in a landscape that had long since changed around them.

The film behind the photography project

The film follows my search for photographs and shows how this place shaped my decisions behind the camera.

The photographic challenges

Separating a single tree from the landscape

I did not want the trees to become merely part of a wider woodland scene. Low camera positions and plenty of open sky gave each trunk the space its individual form needed.

Setting movement against stillness

Long exposure was central to the visual language of this series. Drifting clouds would reveal the movement of time while the dead tree remained perfectly still. That required the wind, cloud patterns, and exposure time to come together.

Images from the project

The photographs in this series offer different ways of seeing the same subject. Sometimes shape takes the lead, sometimes light, and sometimes the passage of time revealed by a long exposure.

Solitary bare tree in an open landscape under a moving, cloud-filled sky
Old and Alone. Marked by the passing years, the old tree stands alone in the open landscape. Above it, the sky keeps moving, while its bare trunk remains. A quiet witness to all that has passed.
Dead tree with sparse branches against long-exposure streaks of clouds
Dead Tree in the Wind. The wind drives the clouds across the sky, yet the bare tree remains unmoving. Its last branches reach towards the light, rigid and fragile at once as the world moves on around it.
A slender dead tree trunk rising alone beneath a dark clouded sky
A Solitary Trunk. Only a slender trunk rises from the landscape into the heavy sky. Almost everything that once made it a tree has disappeared. What remains is a quiet trace of its former existence.
Weathered upright dead tree with blurred clouds moving overhead
Standing Wood. Little is left of the tree beyond its upright form. Above it, the sky passes in long streaks, while the dead wood still holds its place in the landscape.
Old leafless tree standing upright beneath a sky of moving clouds
The Steadfast One. Bare and weathered, the old tree still stands upright. Clouds pass overhead, years go by, and yet it seems unwilling to surrender its place.
Dead tree trunk and bare branches standing in a quiet landscape
Still Here. The crown is gone and the branches are bare, yet the trunk still stands. What remains speaks quietly of a life that has become part of this landscape.
Solitary weathered tree with a few bare branches beneath a heavy sky
Old and Alone #2. Only a few branches recall the crown this tree once carried. It stands alone beneath a heavy sky, marked by time yet still part of the landscape.

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