I just recently posted on my facebook and Instagram a new Ultracolour Tree, something that I began years ago after spotting a canopy of shapes, light and form in Tai Po. So every now and then, when I happen to be paying attention to what is above me when I’m walking in one of Hong Kong’s numerous parks, I will look for a tree with a canopy that spreads wide. The more intricate and winding the trunk and branches the better.
My camera is an discontinued Nikon D700 and my lens is a 24-80mm F2.8. I do not try to get everything I see in a single image, but photograph all the parts of the tree on a more modest focal length like 50mm. In this instance, I took 13 photographs. I output the images in TIFF files with LZW compression and then use Photomerge to stitch the images together. The resulting image is like a puzzle that is pieced together. I have included that image in the images above.
I then crop the image to what I feel looks pleasing to the eye and do any image manipulations like distortion, burning, dodging and fill (rarely) until I am happy.
The final stage is the colorization. I normally will convert the image into a black and white and then use a gradient map to find colors that look appealing. It’s rare that I have something set in mind and more experimental, the playing of color and the contrast of one colour to the next. It is more intuitive now and my liking may change from one day to the next.
The series: http://nyvastudio.com/project/ultracolour-trees/
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