William Stewart, once involved deeply in the software and music industry is now a full-time photographer focusing on black and white, color, natural light objects, shadows, shapes and architecture. With a strong influence coming from painters and sculpture as well as other artists who have explored natural scenery and landspaces, Stewart talks about his new book – Trees – and his process in creating a magnificent collection of these organic subjects.

Please describe the creative process for Trees – what is it about trees that captivate and motivate you to take pictures of them?

My interest in trees is not as a botanist, or a naturalist. I’m fascinated by the shapes they take on, the places they survive and thrive, their response to the environment around them, and how that has such a profound influence on their final form. In this sense, it is a wonderful and literal expression of the whole “nature/nurture” dichotomy writ large, a pine tree only become a pine tree, then you see the extraordinary ways a pine tree grows (or doesn’t), and a tree is thoroughly embedded in its environment, it must adapt or die. And then you see the same species of trees in different environments, and how different they can be in one place compared with another.

I’m also intrigued by the relationship we have with trees, with their products: we are surrounded by them and the life, the culture, the society we have is inconceivable without our use of them. Just sitting in my lounge room, I can see wood from at least 10 different types of trees, let alone the wood of the frame of the house, fencing posts, etc. I chose the Daphne and Apollo story from Ovid for many reasons, but one was the statement by Apollo at the end of the tale, his intention to honour his love for Daphne, for the tree she has become, by adopting the wood, the leaves, etc of the Laurel tree: its a recognition and an honour of the utility that the tree will have. It is a sentiment, an acknowledgement, of the debt we owe to trees that goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation.

Nature photography can be overwhelming when it comes to the wide range of colors and contrasts. From the places you have traveled to, where have you found the most diverse set of colors in trees and how was the approach when photographing them?

I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I am a nature photographer: there are many photographers who focus and produce extraordinary work in this field. For me, the first step is actually the appeal of the eye to a structure, a play of light and shade, a composition of elements, and natural environments, and subjects like trees, provide a more rich and complex subject than man-made structures. It is far more chaotic, irregular, whereas our structures are far more formal and simple. Natural structures also develop over time, the shape of a tree is determined by its life, whereas the shape of a building is static, and we normally seek to remove the effects of time.

The complexity though can be difficult, it is almost too complex, so that our eye just sees it as “a tree”, and we miss the grace and form of its shape, for instance. There are some obvious “trees” (like the Lonely Cypress on P6) that are very contrived, simplified to a point, or the two trees opposite it (on P7) which are haphazard, “just grew there”, and yet leave a similar impression. So, one of the places you look for are environments that are harsh, so a few photos of trees growing around the Mediterranean coast capture some of that, but then trees growing amidst concrete structures, bridges, buildings, are also interesting to see the effects those environments have.

Autumn is a wonderful time of course for colour, and yet it can be such a profusion that it loses all sense of definition and becomes a blur (P66 and others), but I thought about the more intimate spaces here rather than the grander pictures (which are wonderful too) of huge swathes of autumnal forests.

I’ve actually been surprised at how colour presents itself to you in different places. In Scotland (P85, P90), it was raining, green, then suddenly the sun comes through for a moment and sort of kisses the scene with a soft light. In the south of France and Italy, its dry, by the sea its windy, harsh at times, hot in summer, and the dust really adds something to the light, colours it in some manner. The early evening, dusk and on, is also a favourite time, for the classic “golden light”, but also because you start to get an interaction between man-made lights, lamps and so forth, with the fading natural light. Its a hard question to answer really, as I think I tend to look for these images where I am, rather than explicitly travel to somewhere to find them.

You also take pictures of architecture and structures. Trees are usually used to ornament a specific surrounding of a building or structure, and beautify a setting; what’s your favorite place or city where the contrast between trees and buildings is evident?

Rome without a doubt. For a start you get these very odd trees, the stone pines, with their foliage at the top, and bare trunks and branches. Yet, you get a broad range of trees as well, and of course you are in this extraordinary urban landscape that has been a city for nearly 3000 years, and you know that trees have been a part of that for this entire time, Roman villas with sculptures amidst gardens, and so forth. Its also quite odd really, to photograph the Roman forum, knowing that this would have been an intensely urban environment, and trees are littering the entire space; well, this is true of many ruins of course, but the extent of what remains in Rome, and its antiquity is awe-inspiring.

How did you first become interested in Leica?

For the book, which cameras did you use (was it the Leica M Monochrom and the M (Typ 240))?
Quite a few actually as the book contains photos over many years. My camera of choice now is the M240 and has been since it came out, but there are photos in the book using the M9 and the Monochrom. There’s even 1 photo using the D-Lux! There are also a few photos using a Nikon digital camera; a camera I used to use before moving over to Leica “M” about 4 or so years ago. One of the main reasons I moved over to Leica was the quality of their lenses, the sharpness, the small detail and definition that can be captured. I was very pleased, and somewhat surprised actually, at how well the printing was able to bring that out, it exceeded my expectations of what offset printing could achieve, and I owe that to the excellent work done by the printer, Daniel Grammlich and his staff at Grammlich Offsetdruckerei. Their work on the images and care taken when printing really brought out the quality in the pictures I aim for, and why I love using Leica cameras.

You describe Impressionism as a source of inspiration and influence in your work. As a musician, would you say the same about the impressionist musician Claude Debussy, for instance?

Ah! not really. This is quite a question! With music, I started with Rock and then Jazz, and the crossovers that were made with Miles Davis and his protegés in the 70’s. Miles’ “In a Silent Way” is still one of my favourite pieces of music, and I guess that is somewhat impressionistic in character, very restrained. Just like the impressionists, at the time alot of people wondered what the hell he was doing, playing this kind of formless music. That music really opened up alot for me: a time of exploring boundaries and eventually led me to look at Indian classical music, because it had such a well formed structure for improvisation, Balinese music because of the way in which ensembles play together which is I think similar to Reich or Glass than 19th Century composers. 20th Century is really where my musical background hails from, in all its noise and glory. Beyond that, the classical western music is something I’ve dived into again and again, but I still feel its rather a shallow acquaintance. Recently I’ve been going to see orchestral concerts more often, and starting to delve into and enjoy Symphonies.

It’s such an extraordinary shape, and the way the fading light caught the trunk, its almost like a metal structure in its colour and some sense of a solidity that isn’t really there, its rotting. I hadn’t really thought of it as ghastly to be honest, you see alot of dead trees in farmer’s paddocks, and they almost always catch my eye, usually for the elegance of their structure, the rawness of it, stripped of leaves, of life, its life history is quite plain to see. This was a chance find, just wandering around the lake in Keswick in northern England with a friend.

This is on an estate (Inverary Castle in Scotland), an abandoned barn I guess. I had walked past it as I was walking in the forest, and it was such an elegant structure that it stayed in my mind, and while I had taken some photos of it on my way up, I wasn’t really happy with them; it was a pretty flat light and it didn’t really bring anything out. The thing about the UK, is that you get these short breaks in otherwise cloudy, rainy days, when the sun just pokes out and with the moisture the light just comes to life and explodes for a brief instance. So, anyway, the day was pretty gloomy, and I doubted I’d get much. As I was coming back down though the sun started poking through, and I literally ran down to the barn to catch it before it left! So, this ended up being a photo I caught as I was scrambling around to get to the spot (which I’d scoped out earlier) before the light went.

William Stewart is internationally represented by the Albumen Gallery, where Stewart’s books can be purchased. To know more about William Stewart’s work please visit this link: http://www.williamstewart.me/on-the-making-of-trees/. Follow him on Facebook or visit the Album