Reaching for heaven

I like this, man; it's mind-bending! Seriously.

I don't know if you know this or not, but a pioneer in the psychoanalytic orientation in psychology, Carl Jung, a student of Freud, thought that trees were or could be archetypal representations of the psyche. He would have absolutely loved this image of yours.

And I just want to say one more thing about it; there was a poet named Alexander Pope -- I'm reminded of that perhaps because we just have had a lot of news about Popes -- but anyway, I think it was maybe around the turn of the 20th Century he wrote a poem that critiqued critics of poetry of that time called, "Essay on Criticism".

While it was about poetry and poetry criticism, it has a lot of interesting insights about art in general as well. And among the lines in it that I often recall in connection with photograpy are these:

"Life, Force, and Beauty must to all impart.
At once, the source, and aim, and test of art."

And apart from Jung, I think your image has all of that, Holly Morris. In spades. Life. Force. Beauty. The source. The aim. You passed the test.

Postscript -- and your tree even has a face! Luckily I'll spare you my comments on Martin Buber and what the mystic "zadikim" taught about sprits in trees to their hassadim back in the mid 1700's...

Very neat and I'll bet this stands out a lot more because of what you did to the background. Good thinking and love the bending and curves in this. Gives it a lot of perspective and depth, upward depth.

All the best.

Danny.

Very nice curves and motion...

The b&w "background" sets off the spiral of the tree trunk wonderfully and puts all of the attention on that interesting trunk. I also wonder how sepia toning the background would look...possibly give the entire image some added warmth.