Shore Pine Cascade Progression - With Macro

grouper52

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I thought I had posted this bad boy here before, but it seems not.

First photo from 12/06, shortly after getting him home and starting to rein him in with some guy wires. I had purchased this tree from Dan Robinson, who collected him from a lowland bog on northern Vancouver Island a few years before. In fact, the way I really got to know Dan was by haggling with him over the price of this thing all one afternoon at Elandan Gardens: he really didn't want to sell it, so I paid dearly for it, but in the bargain we became friends. My phone call to come talk to him about the tree, and our meeting to look at it is, indeed, captured in my preface to the book. :)

The second photo is a current shot, and the third is a macro, which may give you some idea why we love these unruly things so much. Enjoy.
 

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tanlu

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Awesome tree! It has a special character only seen in the wild. The next step is more ramification and refining the design.
 

Dan W.

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I love the character in this tree! The base/nebari is great :) And I like what you're doing with it.
 

fore

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Beautiful tree Will! Great age! And it's nice to put this tree in context to your preface! ;) (Just finished the book last weekend, nicely done!! It makes me want to go up there just to meet him, I'm sure we'd hit it off lol)
 

dick benbow

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Shore pine is my absolute favorite. I have 3 of them, two from Vancouver Island and one from Oregon.

One of the characteristics that I favor is the nice black rough bark when mature and the deep green shorter needles. (too bad ponderosa don't follow suit the same with their needles, my next favorite tree)

Something I have yet to figure out with them is when they are happy and settled in, why sometimes they bud well and on some( Not all three gratefully) they don't bud and that dies out the next year. So I've learned now when looking to buy or dig, to find one with buds everywhere as those that are not 100% consistant can be frustrating down the line after you've invested several years of careful work. Anyone else noticed that?

Dan's a hard man to bargain with, so Kudos for being able to do that. I had a chance to say Hi and watch him work at this february's Flower and garden show in the convention center in seattle.

Would love to see more shore pine shared here. the weyerhauser collection has several, including one from canada that was quite drastically remodeled recently.
 

fore

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Love to get my hands on one of those Shore pines too Dick. Don't see many of them here in the midwest. I really have to make a trip out to the west coast sometime and see what I can find ;)
 

edprocoat

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Firstly, what a superb tree! It tickles my minds eye with images of the seashore and mountainsides and cliffs, so you have done an excellent job with this one.

On a side note, the second picture is stunning in both the composition as well as the lighting, did you have this picture professionally taken or are you a talented photographer as well?

ed
 

grouper52

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Well, let me take these in reverse order:

edprocoat: you obviously haven't bought my book! That's my photo, and not even a very carefully done one. Took about 2 minutes to set up and take, and about 5 minutes of tweaking in my trusty but archaic PhotoShop Elements 3. On BonsaiSite in the tutorial section I have written a photography tutorial for beginners. Most anyone can do what I did there without a lot of super fancy equipment or knowledge. My whole life I've never had any interest in photography, but taught myself in recent years in my driveway, practicing on my own trees just so I could post them on these forums. I believe I was the first to use HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography on bonsai when photographing (with Victrinia) Dan's trees for the book, but this Shore pine here is just a simple old fashion take: in my front yard, in ambient light on a cloudy twilight evening, on easy-to-use AV settings, with - in this instance - a cooler propping up a hunk of plywood on the ground just behind the tree, on which I draped my usual black velvet cloth.

dick benbow: About branches dying, it varies from species to species, but all trees will do that to some extent as a natural part of their growth. It's a result of growing under conditions of limited resources. If one branch is not getting much light because of higher branches or a neighboring tree, it may die. If water or nutrients are scarce, the tree will make a decision based on its own "wisdom" about which branches to bet on and which to let die. I almost never let it bother me when one of my trees does this: it just gives the tree an older look with more character, and I'll just restyle it if I need to. It usually looks better - more natural - when I'm done. I find that if I try to impose my own ideas on which branches to thin, I often don't choose the best ones, the most natural ones, compared to what the trees usually do.

Both dick benbow and fore, and anyone else who's interested: Lately I've mentioned on this and other forums that I'm at a stage in this hobby where I have far too many trees, and, since I enjoy collecting in nature, and the initial 3-10 years of styling much more than I do the final refinement and maintenance phases, I'm offering for sale a number of my largely finished trees, such as this one. Although not always the case, this one will require someone to actually come here and get it, rather than having me mail or ship it, and with this one I would also only sell it to someone who lived in a climate where it has some chance of surviving. But this one, and many other of my best trees are for sale, and folks can contact me via personal message for details about any of them if interested.
 

edprocoat

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Grouper, lol man I did not even know you had a book! Whats the name of it? My whole life I have had an interest in photography, I take some fantastic shots of trees in nature and of my other lifelong interest, fishing. I did not start taking pictures of my Bonsai until finding this site, and you can tell by my pictures I do not get nowhere near as good results as yours. The pictures here made me think of trees that I had and lost and wished I chronicled. My problem has been lighting and focus at such close range, lighting as I work most days and do not get the chance to take pictures in optimum conditions, its usually inside at night when I photograph them.

Do not deny it, you are a talented photographer, at least with your Bonsai. That shot shows the whole tree in focus with stunning detail and I assume you used a tripod for such clarity, either way good job.

ed
 

daygan

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Ed, dude, you've gotta read more of the posts here - even I knew he had a book :p
 

JudyB

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Ed, it's called Gnarly Branches, Ancient Trees. It's a wonderful book, very inspirational, and the trees in it, well, they are true masterpieces, and works of art. The book is about Dan Robinson a pioneer of naturalistic style of bonsai in America. You should check it out.
 

grouper52

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LOL Ed! Go check out that tutorial of mine at BonsaiSite. You can either bring yourself to an early grave trying to figure it out with indoor lighting, or else just get a cheap tripod, a 2 yard piece of black velvet at a fabric store (the Koreans make the best), and shoot AV set to 32, zoomed in at a modest distance with a telephoto (if you have one - not essential), IN AMBIENT SOFT LIGHT OUTDOORS!!! (very early dusk in the shade on a cloudy evening is ideal, IMO) - the whole tree is in focus and in accurate proportions, and the even lighting lets you see all the details in the best contrast. I used a bounce on occasion for the pictures in the book, and the formal ones are almost all in HDR, but on the forums I simply do the basics and they turn out pretty well. A short time tweaking in PS to get the blackest black background, and to color-bucket it into all the spaces throughout the foliage/branches, adjusting levels a bit, maybe sharpening a bit, maybe darkening highlights a tad - five minutes typically covers that.

The HDR gives a whole different and dramatic look to the trees, and can create stunning lighting effects. The problem with it is the enormous artifacts it creates on trees: the boundaries are very dirty, such that I had to go down to the pixel level and clear up the black background around each and every leaf or needle (!!!) on all those pictures of Dan's trees for the book. That - and using the clone tool to convincingly erase all the wire that Dan adorns his trees with - took me approximately 5-15 hours for each tree! Great results, but I can't believe I did that, and would probably never do it again.

But beyond bonsai, like I said, I have little interest in photography - my wife has to beat me about the head and shoulders to get me to take a camera on a trip! :) I also find people very difficult to photograph well, formally or not, but Vic is simply wonderful at that.

Will
 

edprocoat

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Ed, dude, you've gotta read more of the posts here - even I knew he had a book :p

Lol Daygan, I have read hundreds of posts here, everything new since I joined last sept. and I know there are at least two that have books who frequent here but my 51 year old brain could not tell you who they are. I will remember this one now as its been brought to my attention twice now, hopefully....

I remember the ads back in the mid 90's for some vitamin, centrum I think, the catch phrase for the ad was " Your not getting older, your getting better " I think they lied !

ed
 
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