The forests of Yakushima Island, just off the southern tip of Japan’s Kyushu Island have that spirit-filled feeling so familiar from Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Singapore-based photographer Raphael Olivier here captures all the myth and mystery of the trees which seem to surely be the home of the mischevious tree spirits called “kodama”.
Aspen groves. Breckenridge, Colorado, USA Photo by Twenty20/Jawill529
The Problem of Describing Trees
The aspen glitters in the wind
And that delights us.
The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of August
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.
The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.
It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.
Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.
Mountains, sky,
The aspen doing something in the wind.
See more: http://bit.ly/TVehd4 The world's second-largest known tree, the President, in Sequoia National Park is photographed by National Geographic magazine photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols for the December 2012 issue. The final photograph is a mosaic of 126 images. More video can be seen in the magazine's digital editions on iPad, iPhone, and Kindle Fire.
This is so gorgeous on so many levels.
Named “The President” the giant sequoia that was photographed is named “The President” and is located in Giant Forest of California’s Sequoia National Park.
Photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols captured a photograph of the 247-foot-tall tree that scientists estimate is at least 3,200 years old.
Check out the whole Nat Geo story.
The Aboriginal Cherry Blossom Festival brings together a large number of visitors to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village to see their 2,000 cherry blossom trees.
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