It is now two years ago that I launched a project, which I called the Winter Trees-Project, which is, as you have guessed already, about trees, well, in Winter time. The project did though not really progress much during that time. Truth to be told and good idea aside, nothing really happened. When I initiated this small project I thought it to be a good idea, as

• there are trees literally everywhere around here, and
• I am not very comfortable photographing them, hence it would be a good project to develop my eye.

The Mänty, or Scots Pine, is probably one of the most common trees around here and once covered with freshly fallen snow, they often are exceptionally beautiful. The reddish colour of the trunk, the muted dark green of the leaves create a beautiful contrast with the fresh snow.

Back then though, my vision appeared to be not clear enough and the results weren’t really satisfying. It felt like, pardon the pun, I didn’t see the forest for the trees. During the last two years my eye and mind seemed to have been working in the back of my head and even though I wasn’t actively pursuing the project, my vision, or the idea, got clearer until it struck me and eventually started to see these images. Now it’s merely an issue of waiting for the snow to fall, which for some reason this year hasn’t happened much, finding the right views or simply trees that have character. Many of these images were taken during heavy snowfall which gave the images occasionally an impressionistic impression. Due to this I chose to entitle the series Mänty Sketches similar to my previous winter related series the Mountain Sketches. The project is still in it’s infancy and more images will be added over the next few weeks and months in individual posts. A compilation, the best-of or portfolio if you will, you can find on the projects page.