In my MSU days when I was shooting on 35mm film my favorite setup was TMAX black+white film with a red filter on the camera. I thought this gave landscapes a kind of … “ansel adamsy” type effect.

When I transitioned into digital, one downside was my loss of this effect. I tried numerous ways, including photoshop layers, digital effects, and even using a red filter and converting the image to black and white. No matter what I tried, the results looked plain terrible. It seemed that JPG files deteriorate when exposure and contrast (especially in the blue channel) is pushed to the extreme.

Saturday I decided to try some new things, in hopes I would be able to better reproduce the “ansel adamsy” look. I had come to the conclusion that using an actual red filter on a digital camera was not the way to go. So I shot normal color photos, and used a polarizer filter to keep the nice blue sky from getting washed out. If you have a graduated neutral density filter (who doesn’t!?) that might work as well. Then I set my camera to “RAW” mode, which saves images straight to disk with no processing or JPG compression. Shooting RAW files vs. JPG allows significantly greater flexibility in adjusting color temperature (white balance), exposure, and all the other settings I would need to digitally reproduce the effect film use to achieve so effortlessly…but at the expense of files that can only be opened by special programs and can exceed 35mb each! Yikes!

So here is a color example from Saturday’s shoot:

And here is the same photos with the black/white + red filter effect:

Here are a couple others of two Bur Oaks:

I think it’s a fairly cool look, although I feel as though I am somewhat violating my unspoken rule of minimalist “photoshopping” to my photography. Then again, this same effect can be achieved via traditional photography techniques. After all, one of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams did it back in the ’30s and ’40s.

When you think of spring flowers on trees I would expect things come to mind like Dogwood, Redbud, or the ever so popular Bradford Pear. But pretty much every tree flowers in one way or another… it has to in order to perpetuate it’s species. It’s just that not all of them do it in such a showy fashion.

Take for example Maples. No one ever associates Maples with flowers. Here is a Norway Maple in my front yard. At a glance it appears that the tree is simply pushing out this year’s set of leaves. Closer inspection reveals that it’s actually the maple’s bouquet of flowers, it’s offering to would-be pollinators. I have no idea what those pollinators are, but I’m sure it’s some kind of insect.

And here we have a Norway Spruce. Apparently someone of Norwegian descent must have lived here decades ago and attempted to recreate their homeland. I assume these are the starts of flowers, but I could be wrong. Spruces and Firs often have red, purple or bluish colored flowers and I believe most conifers tend to rely solely on the wind for pollination as they produce exorbitant amounts of pollen.

How many times have I wrote about planting trees? Probably too many, yet I continue to plant and continue to write about it. The weekend turned out to be relatively nice, so on Sunday I planted a little over half of the MDC seedlings I ordered this year (125 trees). For this round of planting I mainly replaced other seedlings that for one reason or another have died. It was kind of interesting locating the flags where I placed a tiny tree two years ago. Near one flag I even found the original pine stem buried under some grass in an advanced state of decay.

In addition to replacing dead trees, I also more densely populated existing groupings. The closer the trees are, the sooner their branches will begin to touch, and the faster they will grow height, rather than width. Pines (the vast majority of what I plant) require loads of sunlight, so when their needles started getting shaded by another tree, they start racing upwards to avoid being shaded to death.

I like planting the trees and imagining what they will look like in 5, 10, 20 years down the road. I also like the idea of someday stepping out my back door and smelling the pine scent in the air. I get my love of trees from my mom, however I get my specific love of Pine trees from my dad.

It’s March and for me that means just one thing… time to plant trees! Most years I stick mainly to the cheapo bundles of seedlings available from the Missouri Conservation Dpt…stuff like White, Loblolly, and the pine from which that this website gets its name…the Shortleaf. However, this year I wanted a few species that are a little more obscure, at least in this part of the country.

So here are my new specimens and why I chose them:

• Jeffrey Pine: Bark smells like vanilla. Yum.
• Grand Fir: Looks cool.
• Dawn Redwood: One of the oldest known tree species, can be found in fossils.
• Concolor Fir: Found some of these growing in the Mark Twain Natl Forest…Looks cool.
• Douglas-Fir: Gets really tall, looks cool.
• Deodar Cedar: Unique and looks cool.

So, basically I just picked out ones that I think look cool. I’m sure to most people these trees all look exactly the same, but thanks to my geek skillz I was able to easily identify each one once I got them out of the boxes. I’m sure it seems like a waste of time and money to a lot of people, but I enjoy the process of planting them and watching them grow over the years. And eventually I’ll enjoy the way they change the look and feel of the property!

There are 3 species of Redwood trees and just about everyone is familiar with two of them. The Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is the overall largest tree species on earth, and the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is world’s tallest tree species.

The third redwood, which you’ve probably never heard of is the lesser known Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), one of the oldest known tree species. This species is interesting because it had been identified only in fossils and was thought to be extinct until a grove of them was discovered in China in the middle part of the 20th century. So this is one of only a handful of tree species I know of which were around when dinosaurs roamed the planet.

The scientific name suggests to me that scientists don’t think this redwood is quite as cool as it’s record setting cousins. That, or they think it’s just too weird… which may be somewhat true. In many ways I actually think the Dawn Redwood is more similar to a Bald Cypress (also a distant relative). I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a Dawn Redwood but they are the only redwood that will grow in Missouri so I should probably plant a few.

Everyone knows about Cedar trees… or do you? If you live in Missouri then you are likely familiar with the Eastern Red Cedar, often called simply a ‘Cedar tree’. However these, along with many other trees commonly referred to as ‘cedars’ are not cedars at all. They are junipers… just take a look at the scientific name Juniperus virginiana.

As far as “true cedars” go, there are only 2, the Deodar Cedar (Cedrus deodara) and the Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani). These are native to the middle east and western himalayas. Cedars cannot tolerate excessively cold weather; southern Missouri is on the fringe of their range. The only one you have probably ever seen around here is a subspecies of the Lebanon Cedar commonly called the Atlas Cedar (Cedrus libani var. atlantica) – sometimes planted as an ornamental. I actually have one in my yard (pictured) and I think it’s really cool.