“The tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods no one had ever heard of outside of the world of secret occult visions.” 
― Simona Panova

As I went for a long hike last Sunday, looking for inspiration for my next photo series, I found myself in a large expanse of cultivated red pines. These trees would have been planted in the mid sixties to reclaim farmland as conservation areas were created.

The conservation areas were created not only for recreation but as a strategy to control floodwater flow after hurricane Hazel flooded destroyed areas outside and within the city of Toronto. Given current events in Houston and Florida, I take comfort that people had the foresight to create a flood control measures. By planting forests, ground erosion is greatly reduced and the forests also cool the air, not to mention all the other elements like wildlife habitat and so on.

I’ve stood among these pines before, and made a few images, but decided that late summer would be a nice time to start a series of pine forest images titled “Among the Pines”. My first few shots featured a lot of golden brown, like the one above, but as I proceeded to hike and photograph, a surprising amount of green plays into the images as well. Since this is a planted forest, it is also managed, and so, the forest is ‘thinned’ out every few years, to encourage growth in the trees and allow light to shine between the trees, which brings on growth of ground cover and an array of colours and textures.

There are a lot of maple and beech saplings growing between the pines, which is a natural progression. It turns out, you can’t plant a maple forest. You have to plant pines first and the maples grow between them. Once you clear out the pines, after several years, the maples are established and take over. Something I did not know before.

So, here it is, image number one of the “Among the Pines” series. I hope you enjoy it.

Nikon D800
Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 (272ENII)@90mm
1/4 sec, f/14.0, ISO 400 

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