Vascular
Trees have been a regular subject for my photography over the years. Whilst viewing some trees lit by red festive lights it became evident to me that the glowing leafless branches shared a very similar form to the vascular system of the human body, The twisting interlocking forms and the variation of scale from the weighty sturdiness of the trunk to the threadlike finer outer branches was reminiscent of the larger arteries and veins giving way to the smaller blood vessels and capillaries. These blood red branches set against the darkening blue of the winter sky gave me the impression of viewing the blood vessels and capillaries inside my own eye. It was an idea that fascinated me and spurned me on to try and create a series of images that could also give the viewer that they were witnessing at a macro level the blood vessels and capillaries inside of their own eye.
I decided to shoot after sun down when the the trees would be in shadow and the sky had a darker, more translucent quality. Utilising a flash and red gel allowed me to then illuminate the trees with a deep red light. This separated them from the sky and landscape behind and removed as much of their original colour and dimensional reference to give a stronger blood vessel appearance. As the project progressed I also found that shooting the images out of focus further enhanced the fluid like look and gave a deeper three dimensional image.
A small selection of images are presented below with more images to follow as I continue to work on this project.
