The Glorious Olive!

I had the best part of 3 days to myself, photographing in Mallorca at the end of our summer holiday. After tackling a few classic views and having an extremely nasty fall in the process, I decided to concentrate on some more intimate images. One thing I was extremely keen to capture was the Mallorcan olive - the island boasts what must be some of the most magnificent and ancient olive trees to be seen. The image above was a tiny section of the inside of a hollowed out trunk of a particularly massive specimen. I experimented with taking a selection of images with different focal points and doing a quasi focus blend in photoshop to maximise depth of field.

The tree was surrounded by a scruffy assortment of plants and flanked by other trees and fencing in the distance, making a successful composition of the tree itself very hard to achieve. However, I was determined to try! The resulting image was taken at f/18 to get a nice starburst effect with the early morning sun shining through the tree. Framing was compromised someewhat due to the surrounding and the sheer size of the tree, but I was pleased with the end result. I did try experimenting with my 17mm tilt/shift lens to change the plane of focus and so throw the surroundings out of focus - however I tend to find these kind of images a little gimicky, for my tastes and far preferred the 'straight' version.

Next up is another interior composition of the same tree. Although the first composition is probably my favourite, I feel this next image really emphasises the patterns and textures of the gnarled wood of the hollowed out tree trunk. I could probably have spent many more hours, just on this one tree - but the light was soon going to become a little harsh and breakfast was calling!