Trees are awesome! This collection of abstract art features trees without leaves, almost all of them dead trees These finalized images begin with my photography of mostly dead trees, proud tall dead trees, as well as tree stumps and other gnarly remains of trees. I have long been struck by the beauty of these forms and textures. That is how this project began.

In October 2021 I traveled to New Mexico (Taos and Santa Fe) and Yellowstone National Park to shoot images of dead trees. All the images in this particular exhibit were shot in New Mexico. I took most of my portraits of these trees along hiking trails, including some high-altitude trails.

Over the years, I have developed digital artistry techniques for digitally blending my images of trees with texture images of rocks, clouds, water and many other natural objects and vignettes that I captured in New Mexico and Yellowstone. In total, my collection draws upon my collection of more than 2,000 images of trees and textures.

I use Photoshop to blend the tree and texture layers together. I then use additional Photoshop tools such as adjustment layers, masking, gradients, blurring, spot healing and lighting techniques to wrestle these abstract images into final form. These techniques often involve considerable lot of trial-and-error and the end product often consists of dozens of PS layers. While working on these images, they sometimes take on a life of their own. Note: My works do not use any ready-made art filters, PS or otherwise.

My images tend to go into a variety of directions. Some of them resemble good ole’ photography and others result in highly abstract works far from the original tree images.

I have recently published a book of my Yellowstone images: Life After Leaf (2022). You are invited to follow this link to learn more about my book.