Tree sculpture

I'm a sucker for trees, and especially geometric patterns. I went with

a BW rendition for this one because it reminded me of the kinds of

photos I did in the 70's with large format.

I quite like this.  Very simple lines giving a nice, straightforward foreground composition with a more complex background.

Very nice composition indeed, Steve. The fallen diagonal trunk ties the whole together, in more of an nontraditional composition. I like the softness of the tones, and I  note the darker top parts of some of the trunks & wonder what it would look like with a tad more contrast perhaps ...? However, I'm looking at this on my laptop, which isn't the most accurate rendering either.... It might very well be that the softer tonal range was what you were after as well.... In any event, I would love to see your large format series of this kind of setting..! (PS: saw briefly some interesting-looking tree roots photos in your portfolio -- will look at those again in more detail  :-) 

Thanks for your comments, Rob and Marjolein.  Marjolein, I did try several different levels of contrast, settling on a softer version.  With this image there were so many different ways to go with contrast.  I ended up wanting to bring out the texture and subdue the brightness of the scene.  I played a lot with the black and white conversion tool in PS, adjusting the lightness and darkness of the separate colors in the original image as they were rendered in black and white.  This image is darker than was the actual scene .  Notice several of the large trunks have a "line" in the middle where it is darker on top and lighter on the bottom.  This is the actual waterline from two years ago when the whole woods was flooded for over a month from high water in the Mississippi river nearby.  This is a flood plain.  This image:  http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=14857472 shows the effect on the whole woods. 

Great photo, Steve, as Marjolein says, the diagonal pulls the whole group together. That's also a fascinating statement about the flood line. I had noticed the difference in tone and was wondering about the cause until I read your explanation.

Just wanted to tell you that I like the subtlety of the tones as you rendered it above, Steve... (Looked at this on my other screen now) The high water line is an interesting effect indeed & must be quite surreal, seeing it real-life...

Thanks for your comments, Marjolein.  Look at the photo in this folder of the whole woods with the line on all the trees; its an eerie effect!  When doing the black and white conversion from color, I was thinking of the different tones achieved when shooting large format and using different films and developers.  The tones were often different from the literal translation from color to black and white as seen by the eye.  PS gives us the ability to "play" with this effect in an artistic way beyond what could be done simply with film and developer.