Tree portrait photography

Given the lack of available people to photograph I thought I'd try photographing trees and rather than documenting the particulars of a species I thought that it would be interesting to try taking photographs as one would a portrait of a person: Trying to capture the essence of that individual tree in the manner that Richard Avedon did while documenting the workers of America.

Finding the character or history of an inanimate object is challenging but here are a few shots; a white background or aggressive lighting seem to work well, the difficulty lies in finding a solo tree unencumbered by context so that its form becomes the focus.

Billy Mudd by Richard Avedon 1981