Life After Leaf:
An Artistic Celebration of Yellowstone's Dead Trees
Trees are awesome! Life After Leaf features trees without leaves, dead trees. These finalized images begin with my photography of 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 Yellowstone National Park for the purpose of shooting images of the trees. All the images in my book were shot along high altitude hiking trails
Over the years, I have developed Photoshop 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 this year. In total, my exhibit draws upon my collection of more than 2,000 images of trees and textures.
I use Photoshop to blend the tree and texture layers. I then use additional Photoshop tools such as adjustment layers, masking, gradients, blurring, and lighting techniques to wrestle these abstract images into final form. These techniques often involve considerable 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.
The images in my book 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.
Life After Leaf contains 72 photos taken at Yellowstone National Park along with more than 160 works of art featuring Yellowstone’s dead trees. I invite you to order your copy below. The price is $45 and shipping is free.
Erich Vieth
ISBN 978-0-578-37787-2
Release Date: September 1, 2022
Life After Leaf is available at these two St. Louis bookstores:
Left Bank Books
399 N Euclid Ave,
St. Louis, MO 63108
Dunaway Books
3111 S Grand Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63118