Figure 1 – Sycamore Tone-on-tone, Black Nook, Cambridge, MA, March. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

All winter long I have been eying several ancient sycamore trees off Fresh Pond.  These are the quintessential urban park tree.  In fact, all through my childhood in New York City I used to look down on one from my bedroom window or at the squirrels that made their apartment ever so close to ours.  The sycamores at Fresh Pond have spent the winter with their great bleached, arm-like branches raised up as if in defiance against the winter. Several times I had thought to photograph them but was repeatedly thwarted by the lack of sun or the intervening branches.

The light today was odd, overcast but bright, and as I looked up into the canopy at one of these trees I was struck by one of my favorite photographic challenges, the tone-on-tone, the challenge of pulling out an image of whites on a white background without exaggerating the dynamic range excessively.  Here was a case to be made for a truly white background.  I loved the exaggerated upward angle, the peeling bark, and the burred seed pods against the sky.  It was worth the experiment of Figure 1.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 104 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode, 1/400th sec at f/20 with + 1 exposure compensation.