One Tree ...

I like this composition – just another of those occasions where a single tree against the skyline stopped me in my tracks. It has before, and will again. 

What can I say – it’s incurable ;-)

I used the scene to check once more how well the rule of thirds really does create eye pleasing images from minimal subject matter. Take two thirds of the portrait as sky, and simply placing the tree at the intersection of the right third and lower one third dividing lines – voila, a balanced interesting image emerges, don’t you think? And yet again the Midlands clouds behaved just right.

Treeline

Driving through South Africa I am often fascinated by trees. Sometimes it is a solitary specimen that has me asking how it came to be where it is - a lonely weeping willow at the roadside of a national highway, or a dead blue gum trunk presumably struck by lightning - its remains still defiantly standing erect. So often the formation of a clump of trees adds great interest to an otherwise boring landscape (why does the Free State come to mind?). And then there are those frequently seen rows of trees, implausibly positioned along the ridge of some distant hill or kopje looking for all the world like a mohawk haircut in but not of nature. Today what caught my eye was a simple row of blue gums - an obvious wind break alongside agricultural lands. And one solitary hay bale - I could not help but wonder where its siblings had gone and why this one remained behind. In panoramic mode, I tried to keep the composition to the photographer's 'rule of thirds'. 

I think it works.