Arizona Skyamores

One of the unexpected pleasures of my trip to Arizona was seeing native trees in their bare branched, winter state.  The vast majority of native trees in Australia do not shed their leaves in autumn - so there is much less variation between seasons.  Many of out street trees are from the Northern Hemisphere - oaks and such like - so the trees that change are visitors from foreign lands.

At Montezuma Castle (I still flinch when I write that!) there were wonderful stands of Arizona Sycamores - wonderful pale trees against the sky and the rocks.  As soon as I saw them I knew that I would render the images I took as black and white, rather than colour.

The bark of these trees looked a lot like some of the gum trees at home - patch worked with layers.  You can also see here the bark has been rubbed smooth by hundreds of fingers and hands.  These patches form "soft" looking sections within the image - but thats how the tree looked.  It was as if these were special places that attached more attention that the rest of the tree.  

A sat on a wall near the tree and just as I suspected, people who walked past reached out to touch the tree.  I actually wondered if they were all aware that they were doing it.

You can find more marco shots at Macro Monday 2 and I Heart Macro.