Woman Spends 14 Years Photographing The World's Oldest Trees - You Won't Believe The Results(Photos)

A photographer by the name of Beth Moon really did something amazing when putting together a photobook of ancient trees. Sure, we see trees all the time but the older they are the more mesmerizing they become.

Beth Moon spent roughly 14 years photographing ancient trees and the results are truly something that will blow you away. She has traveled far and wide to find the best possible trees to use take photographs of and well, they’re mind-blowing in more ways than most would ever be able to imagine. Not only does her work draw out their beauty but it also highlights how wise these trees are as odd as that might sound.

On Abbeville.com where this photobook can be ordered for those interested in buying one as follows was written about this book and Moon who captured these photographs:

Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs.

This handsome volume presents sixty of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews—some more than a thousand years old—that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called “upside-down trees” because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa.

Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at the New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.

That being said, there are tons of photographs that can be found on her website as well as highlighting the things within this book. This collection is called Portraits of Time and it is something that is entirely black and white making it feel all the more intense. This collection holds photos of things like Rilke’s Bayon and even my personal favorite The Queen Elizabeth Oak.

Below you will find some of my favorites from this collection but please do look at the rest of Beth Moon’s work. Her pieces pull a piece of time with them and well, they’re something that really makes you think. I for one adore these photographs and could spend all day looking at them.