Category Archives: Wood

Trees and their Faces

September 27, 2023 Vicki Uthe 13 Comments

You are about to go on an adventure with me. You’ll need your creative imagination. Think back to seeing objects in clouds as a child. Here, I’ll share with you the faces I see in…wood. Most are fallen trees and branches that have had time to build character. Bear with me, I think you’ll enjoy it.

This guy has quite the hair-do and needs to see a dentist.

Most of what I find are profiles. This one, facing left, has the complete package…an eye, mouth, nose, AND horn on top of its head.

This one is a little more vague, peeking out of the grasses. But I DO see an eye, nose hole, and mouth line.

This may be the best one I’ve ever seen. It’s not a profile, it actually has TWO eyes, a nose, and a mouth. In hindsight, I wish I had taken another view of it to show how important the angle is for this one.

This is another rare, two-eyed face. Unfortunately, it got into a fight and seems to have a black eye behind its long nose.

Now that I’ve got you “seeing” what I see…here is a pretty clear one.

Here’s an interesting one. Or is it two? At first glance, it SEEMS like the same piece of wood.

This one is literally screaming and looking at me as it comes out of the wood.

Two similar ones, but the lower one is thirsty.

This one reminds me of the head of a dinosaur.

Again the complete package of eye, nose hole, horns, and mouth.

Skeleton ostrich head?

Eye, mouth, little horn on top.

Some horns come out the side.

Face? or…giant clothespin.

Some definitely require more imagination…lol.

Eye, mouth, and…an ARM?? Crawling out of the tree!

This one, at a different angle, looks like two fighting with their mouths.

Such big eyes you have.

A sleek one with a mushed-up mouth.

Sleeping Beauty.

October is just around the corner and with that…Halloween!

Thank you all for being loyal followers of this blog over the past several years. It is with great sadness that I announce this to be my last post on this website. It has just gotten WAY too expensive. I will be searching for more affordable ways to share my images with you, my loyal fans, so stay tuned! Creativity is IN the AIR!! lol.

Nature, Wood

Tree Roots

September 20, 2023 Vicki Uthe 2 Comments

According to Wikipedia here is a definition of roots.

“In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the surface of the soil, but roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is, growing up above the ground or especially above water.

The major functions of roots are absorption of water, plant nutrition, and anchoring of the plant body to the ground.”

This post is more a collection of a tree’s RSA as defined, again by Wikipedia, below.

“In its simplest form, the term root system architecture (RSA) refers to the spatial configuration of a plant’s root system. This system can be extremely complex and is dependent upon multiple factors such as the species of the plant itself, the composition of the soil, and the availability of nutrients. Root architecture plays the important role of providing a secure supply of nutrients and water as well as anchorage and support.

The configuration of root systems serves to structurally support the plant, compete with other plants, and uptake nutrients from the soil. Roots grow to specific conditions, which, if changed, can impede a plant’s growth. For example, a root system that has developed in dry soil may not be as efficient in flooded soil, yet plants are able to adapt to other changes in the environment, such as seasonal changes.

Now that the science is out of the way, let’s move on to the art of RSAs. Trees are fascinating organisms and have evolved to survive in some pretty harsh environments.

This pair is clinging to the edge of Thompson Creek in Oak Creek Canyon just north of Sedona, AZ. This is a creek prone to different water heights depending on the time of year, amount of snow in higher elevations, monsoon amounts, etc.

This tree can be found in East Clear Creek near Williams, AZ. Again prone to different water levels. I’ve seen these roots completely submerged as often as I’ve seen them dry.

Some of the craziest root systems I’ve ever seen have been here at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. To me, these trees look like they are trying to run away. They are nowhere NEAR water as the lake is hundreds of feet below.

Tree Trunks

September 13, 2023 Vicki Uthe 5 Comments

My next topic in the theme of trees is tree trunks. These can mostly be broken up into two categories: shapes and patterns. Here are some of the crazy-shaped trunks I’ve encountered.

There are several different types of tree trunks. 1) Single Trunk Trees; 2) Multi-trunk Trees; 3) Clonal Coppices (or trees with sprouts from the base; 4) Clonal Colonies (ie: Aspen trees); 5) Conjoined and Hugging Trees; 6) Fallen Trees; and 7) Banyan-like trees; to get us started.

I can’t tell if this one has one trunk or several sprouting from the one. Or are they just very large branches…?

This Ponderosa pine was hit by lightning.

I can’t even begin to explain what happened to this tree.

The bark of some of the trees I’ve encountered appears to be shedding paper.

A Banyon type tree.

What the…?!? Several…trunks?

Colorful palm tree trunks.

Yikes! Is this tree OK??

A clever yet natural way to keep things from climbing up this tree.

A tree trunk that seems to have had some trouble heading in the right direction.

Some crazy trunks in San Diego.

Old fallen trunks can be so beautiful. The following images show close-ups of patterns and designs etched into old, fallen tree trunks.

Moss of various colors also collects on tree trunks.

Some tree trunks close-up have amazing texture, patterns, design, and lines.

This tree was turned into a shrine of sorts in Dubar Square in Kathmandu.

Collections, Nature, Wood

Trees

September 6, 2023 Vicki Uthe 5 Comments

I found the keyword trees and figured it would be a pretty straightforward post. I was wrong. As I sifted through the images I saw too many I wanted to share. Thus, this will be a four-part series throughout September. I’ll begin with trees, move to trunks, roots, and finally the faces I find in trees as I wander.

Trees are truly unique. If you’ve ever read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein you’ll get a glimpse as to how versatile they are.

The structure of a tree is used to keep track of families.

They house wildlife.

They break and land on houses in extreme weather events.

The Ponderosa Pine Trees like to collect snow during a storm and then, as the air warms, drop it in clumps onto the ground or to house roofs with a sometimes alarming thud.

I used this tree as a bike rack. I locked my bike to it after using it as a shuttle vehicle for a Verde River float.

Palm trees grow randomly on beaches from dropped coconuts.

They can be used as posts for hammocks.

They change color!!

They don’t live forever. But some seem to.

Yosemite National Park has a few Giant Sequoia groves. And by groves I mean maybe 8-10 trees in an area. Also known as the giant redwood or Sierra redwood can be found naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California.

The Giant sequoia grows to an average height of 164–279 ft with trunk diameters ranging from 20–26 ft. Giant sequoias are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,200 years old.

Wood from mature giant sequoias is fibrous and brittle, trees would often shatter after they were felled. The wood was unsuitable for construction and instead used for fence posts or match sticks. The giant sequoia is a very popular ornamental tree in many parts of the world. The species is named in honor of the Cherokee Chief Sequoyah.

I crouched to get through this one that was lying on its side.

There was a sign with a picture of a stagecoach driving through this one.

Most aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers. New stems in the colony may appear from 100–130 ft from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground. There is a colony in Utah that has been estimated to be as old as 80,000 years. Some aspen colonies become very large with time, spreading about 3 ft per year, eventually covering many hectares. They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, and new sprouts appear after the fire burns out. Given their clonal nature, Aspen groves are believed to be the largest living organism on the planet.

I found these two trees in Yosemite as well. Both growing out of the granite.

It’s just a cool shot. Dead trees, blue sky…

This path through Henry Horton State Park in Tennessee is a beautiful walk among the trees.

A banyan is a fig tree that develops accessory trunks from aerial prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. These roots mature into thick, woody trunks, which can become indistinguishable from the primary trunk with age. These aerial roots can become very numerous. The Kolcatta (Calcutta) Banyan, which has been tracked carefully for many years, currently has 2,880 supplementary trunks. Such prop roots can be sixty feet in height. Old trees can spread laterally by using these prop roots to grow over a wide area. In some species, the prop roots develop over a considerable area that resembles a grove of trees, with every trunk connected directly or indirectly to the primary trunk.

I’ll end with snow and ice-encased Ponderosa pine trees on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff.

AHPS, Arizona Highways PhotoScapes, Nature, Outdoors, Photo Workshops, Places to Shoot, Travel, Water, Wood

Crater Lake and Central Oregon

September 23, 2020 Vicki Uthe 2 Comments

Arizona Highways PhotoScapes ran a photo workshop in Oregon in August of 2018 with photographer Shane McDermott who I have had the good fortune of working with in the past. We had seven participants sign up for this adventure which made me the only volunteer. It worked out fine as a couple of the folks drove themselves so there was plenty of room in the 15 passenger van.

It was a five-day workshop that ran from Saturday to Wednesday. We flew in and out of Bend, OR which is also where the workshop began photographing Smith Rock State Park and surrounding area for the weekend.

On Monday we headed to Crater Lake. The challenge in August of 2018 was the haze of raging wildfires in Northern California whose smoke was pouring across the border and causing less than clear skies in both Bend and Crater Lake.

Bend is a city with a population a little larger than my hometown of Flagstaff. Flag is around 75,000 and Bend around 100,000. The big difference? The Deschutes River runs right through the center of town in Bend.

Now for the workshop, and how it unfolded. Getting to Bend was an adventure in itself. I flew out of Phoenix and had a 6:30 pm departure time. However, there were big dust storms in the area so the plane didn’t take off until 11:00. I made it to my hotel in Bend by 2:00 am! The next morning I met Shane in the lobby and we headed to Crater Lake to scout. I’m glad we went on Friday because the air was pretty clear. All the smoke was setting off on the horizon much like the marine layer sits offshore, waiting to pounce.

Here’s the difference a day or two makes. And sometimes the difference just a few hours makes!

There is not always time on a workshop to scout with the photographer the day before. In this case, I was super glad it worked out in order to enjoy the blue of the lake and skies. Shooting this scene is a little bit like photographing Grand Canyon though. The pictures can not capture the scope and size of this magnificent lake.

The next day we met our participants, had breakfast, engaged in a presentation from Shane, loaded lunch into a cooler, and headed out to Smith Rock State Park around 10 am.

We wandered around and learned about lighting. Shooting mid-day is not ideal so we had a picnic lunch before heading back to the hotel. Sunday morning we came back here and photographed in beautiful light all morning.

Saturday’s afternoon/evening shoot was at Sparks Lake. We had picked up a rotisserie chicken for dinner in the field. Doing that gave us a lot of time to photograph and less time sitting in a restaurant waiting for food.

Sunday morning, after our morning shoot at Smith Rock State Park, we headed to downtown Bend for lunch and photographing along the river. The smoke was settling in so we didn’t spend much time there and headed to Tumalo Falls for about three hours where we had another picnic dinner.

Smoky conditions kind of forces one to look at details in order to have images without a lot of haze.

You can see the haze in the distant shots. I was able to have plenty of time to practice long exposures for those silky water shots.

We went back to Bend for one more night at the hotel before heading to Crater Lake lodge Monday morning after another spectacular morning shooting at Smith Rock State Park. It’s so nice to hit a spot several times, especially after having image critiques during the day and getting different ideas from the talented photographers that attend our trips. That is one of my favorite things about these workshops; seeing the same place through so many different lenses. It’s really pretty cool.

So now it’s Monday mid-day and we are having a picnic at Crater Lake. As the afternoon sets in so does the smoke and the lake pretty much disappears. Shane takes us to an amazing spot that is listed as a wildflower walk. It was beautiful and easier to shoot close-ups to avoid smoke haze.

Heading off on the little wildflower hike with our fearless leader.

August was a great time to catch wildflowers in bloom.

Vidae Falls is a long meandering waterfall. This is the bottom of the falls. That large rock is about the size of both my fists. It’s not quite as spectacular as Tumalo Falls but good practice nonetheless.

Tuesday morning we spent driving the rim and photographing the lake.

The smoke added an eery feeling to the sunrise. You know it’s thick when you can look right at the sun and not even squint.

I got some great silhouettes as our photographers attempted to capture images of the lake.

I grew tired of the expanse of lake covered in smoke so I turned my attention to other things. The trees in the area were amazing. They reminded me of alien tentacles. The one below looks like it’s going out for a run!

We kept driving by these poles all over the park. Apparently, they are snow poles so you can see where the road is when it snows! Imagine that much snow!! Hence why the park closes for winter.

Faces were everywhere.

This tree looked like it was growing a fur coat for winter. One side had dark hairy looking moss and the other side bright green.

In this area of the park orange and white pumice were everywhere. It’s always interesting to me to see where plants take root.

Tuesday afternoon/evening we headed out of the park and out into the forest to try to get below the smoke. Crater Lake National Park is at 7,100 feet above sea level. So we headed out and down in search of Toketee Falls, about an hour away. Toketee is a Chinook word meaning Graceful. The irony in this choice of names is that the falls were named long before the hydroelectric system was in place, and the full volume of water of the North Umpqua River was allowed to flow over the falls in a much less graceful and much more explosive manner.

Toketee Falls is one of the most famous waterfalls in all of Oregon, renowned far and wide for the graceful columnar basalt formation framing the two-stepped falls. The North Umpqua River has carved a sinuous gorge out of the lava flow, resulting in a waterfall of 113 feet in height, a 28-foot upper tier which plunges into a pool flanked by a deep alcove, followed by an 85-foot plunge into a large pool. At the trailhead, the wooden 12-foot diameter Toketee Pipeline is passed, which diverts much of the volume of the North Umpqua River to a powerhouse downstream. This artificial taming of the river allows the waterfall to flow in an extremely consistent manner all year long.

The trail up to this waterfall was strenuous in its steps but a very well maintained trail and easy to maneuver on and set up tripods. The waterfall at the end was worth the hike and for those who didn’t make it, there were plenty of moving water opportunities along the way.

Wednesday morning found us packed and ready to head back to Bend and say goodbye. We hit Watchman overlook on the way out of the park and were on the road by 10:30 am. It was a spectacular workshop led by Shane who did an amazing job of providing excellent shooting opportunities under less than perfect conditions. Such is the life of a photographer. We are always waiting for light or weather conditions to cooperate, aren’t we?

Look for this one if it ever comes up again with Arizona Highways PhotoScapes. You won’t be sorry you went.

Happy Shooting!!

Architecture, Historic Buildings, Places to Shoot, Shooting Close to Home, Travel, Urbanscape, Wood

Same Location, Different Visions

May 14, 2020 Vicki Uthe 5 Comments

At the end of April, my friend and fellow photographer Amy Horn and I grabbed our cameras, donned masks, and drove separately 30 minutes west of Flagstaff to photograph downtown, Williams. It was a great time to shoot as the town was largely closed down and the throngs of tourists were safely staying at home. All of the Route 66 signs and buildings were still there.

We played a game we had done once before in Jerome, Arizona. We walked the same street, shot some of the same scenes that caught our eye, and compared notes. It is truly remarkable how different a location looks through a different lens. Of course, this was all accomplished while staying six feet apart.

I’m going to share some of the images we took on that day.

Olympus OMD1 Mark III, 1/640, f/7.1, ISO 200

On the way into town, we came across an abandoned building. We were both struck by the colorful tulips. In one direction was a great old abandoned building. In the other a great old abandoned house.

Below are the windows from the street side of the old house.

Olympus OMD1 Mark III, 1/2500, f/4, ISO 200

Olympus OMD1 Mark III, 1/500, f/4, ISO 200

The abandoned building had some great textures and colors in the wood siding that we were both drawn to.

Williams has a main street that is all about Route 66, the Mother Road. Many of the signs and buildings here date back to the 1950s.

Olympus OMD1 Mark III, 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 200

From here, our interests shifted. I love repeating patterns, Amy found a great storefront window.

Olympus OMD1 Mark III, 1/200, f/5.6, ISO 200

And that was our Pandemic photoshoot in Williams. Stay safe out there, wear masks when around people, keep that six-foot distance, and hopefully in the not too distant future Amy and I will see you on an Arizona Highways PhotoScapes workshop!

Happy shooting and stay safe out there!!

P.S. – Amy shot with the Olympus (as marked). I shot with the Lumix GX-8, 28-150mm lens.

Nature, Outdoors, Places to Shoot, Travel, Wood

Crater Lake, Wood

September 12, 2018 Vicki Uthe 5 Comments

If you enjoyed my post about wood on the Colorado River back on July 18th you are REALLY going to enjoy this one…I think. The trees in Oregon were amazing. They had such stories to tell. Here is just a sampling. There were WAY too many great ones to share them all here.

There was a lot of this going on, bent over trees where one side looks like it exploded and the other side is just calm, normal…tree.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 1600, 1/400 of a second at F/3.5, 35 mm, handheld

There was the occasional window. The lines and textures around this hole kept me occupied for a while. It was much more visually pleasing to look at this than the smoke-filled lake in the crater.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 6400, 1/640 of a second at F/4.5, 80 mm, handheld

And then the faces…you see it, Right? Two eyes, a long snout…for me it brings life to the forest. Life to things that are no longer living I guess. Dead wood with more character and stories than the living.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 6400, 1/640 of a second at F/4.5, 41mm, handheld

Some of the lines in the wood reminded me of the flow of water. And I LOVE water. Especially moving water. These lines here look like a meandering river with eddies and everything.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/100 of a second at F/8, 64 mm, tripod

The roots on this tree caught my attention. It looks like it got tired of being in the same place and decided to uproot and just walk away.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/200 of a second at F/6.3, 51 mm, handheld

Again with the faces.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/320 of a second at F/4.7, 25 mm, handheld

This was happening on a lot of the trees in this area; bulging sections of the trunk.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/30 of a second at F/6.3, 14 mm, tripod

I kept seeing black feathery stuff on the ground. It looked synthetic, man-made. I couldn’t come up with what could possibly be being littered all over my us humans. Then I looked up. Wow. It’s some kind of fungus on the trees! Right next to the bright green moss.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 800, 1/60 of a second at F/5.6, 63 mm, handheld

This tree was fun to shoot. They call them Ghost Trees. People actually buy them and “plant” them in their yards in Central Oregon. It looks like its lower tentacle has grabbed something and is holding it in its curled up hand.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/8 of a second at F/10, 14 mm, tripod

This is another tree that had tremendous image potential. Tons of line, form, color and texture to keep one busy for hours.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 200, 1/250 of a second at F/4, 7 mm, handheld

I was impressed with these wooden poles. They are all along the roadway at the higher elevations of Crater Lake National Park. They are roadway markers for the deep snows this area receives in winter. 400+ inches a year. Let that sink in. This snow is, in part, what helps to keep the lake at consistent levels. It’s a closed lake so it evaporates and seeps and is only replenished with rain water and snowmelt.

Lumix DMC-GX8, ISO 400, 1/1250 of a second at F/4, 14 mm, handheld

Go to a National Park and challenge yourself to shoot something beyond the iconic park images. Find the details, they can be fascinating.

Happy shooting!

Kachina Photos Blog