by Yan Zhang

Trees are one of the most essential elements in our natural environment.
In landscape photography, trees can appear in many different forms through the photographers’ eyes – from the focus in a picture to a supporting background object.

“Winter Light” by Lars van de Goor

Trees had played an important role in my own photography practice. In 2007, after I bought my first DSLR camera Canon 400D, I began to explore every potential photography location near my home and my workplace. I found a solitary tree standing on the hill in the Werrington South campus of the university where I worked.  During the next 3 years, I spent a great deal of effort exploring this special tree – I took hundreds of pictures of this tree in different seasons and under different weather and light conditions. Over time, this tree became famous at the university campus. My photographs of this tree appeared in the university campus newsletters and university art exhibitions. My academic colleagues even named this tree as “Yan’s tree”.

Unfortunately, sometime in 2012, this graceful tree was seriously damaged by a severe storm and finally removed by the campus management department. Now I am no longer able to take pictures of this tree, but this early experience gave me important opportunities to train myself with various photography skills.

This collection contains tree images published on 1x over the years.  During my selection from over several hundreds of beautiful tree images, I have paid special attentions to the following four types of images: 

Solitary trees or a group of trees

“Silence and Solitude” by Huibo Hou

“Four” by Lukas Zugaj

Trees within another landscape

“Ladies in White” by Vlad Sokolovsky

“Against Odds” by Andreas Wonisch

Story telling

“Under the African Sun” by Piet Flour

“Rain of Spring” by Kouji Tomihisa

Trees presented as background

“Trees and lights” by Oystein Lunde Ingvaldsen

”Seagulls over the Fields” by Yvette Depaepe

I hope this gallery of amazing tree shots will bring good inspirations to our photography fellows.

“Rescue Me” by Steven Fudge

“The Last One” by Arzur Michael

“Trapped” by Martin Rak 

“Polderlandscape” by Huib Limberg

“Trace & Tree” by Carsten Meyerdierks

“Mist over Deaddvlei” by Ben McRae

“The Tree” by Mel Brackstone

“Postlude” by Mary Kay

“The Lonely Island” by Andrey Trifonov

“The Supervisor” by Mathilde Guillemot

“Paradise” by Matt Anderson