This is a giant elm tree that was in my backyard in Saskatoon. I've known for a while now that I wanted to photograph the elm... So when did I do it? My last night in Saskatoon, as the light was fading from the sky. It's kind of an allegory for the rest of my life. I had so many sunny days to take pictures, but my last day in Saskatoon was overcast and I had to take what I could get.

Part of the problem was that I didn't really know how to photograph something so big. Bark macros are cool, but don't convey the enormity of the tree. My 50mm lens is nowhere near wide enough to get the whole trunk/branches, and neither is my zoom, which maxes out at 24mm. I had to wait to get the wide angle lens to make a serious attempt at this photo.

I took several exposures, and thought I would make an HDR image of the tree. I'm not really a fan of HDR photography... it usually looks so cartoonish and fake. In this case, I thought it would help bring out the texture in the bark, especially given the poor light. I've seen a few HDR flowers, trees and landscapes that were very tastefully done.

My HDR experiment was a miserable failure. It turned out looking like a preschooler's fingerpainting, or one of those 3D posters where you are supposed to cross your eyes to see the image. I plan to work on it some more, but I don't have a lot of time right now, or really any software for HDR. The elm HDR project is on the shelf. But for now, here is a single exposure of a very big tree that I miss a great deal.