We hiked through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest high up in the White Mountains in Inyo National Forest on Tuesday. The elevation is over 10,000 feet so the air is thin and I huffed and puffed up and down the hilly, shale covered trail carrying my camera on its tripod. The Bristlecone Pines are the oldest trees in the world and the pines found here are the oldest, some over 5000 years old. This one doesn’t appear to be alive any longer but many of the trees here appear dead but have a branch or two with green pine needles. The textures of the bark is twisted and gnarled making the trees look otherworldly. If you stare at the trees long enough, it’s easy to imagine they are creatures instead of trees. I used a polarizer to darken the sky and converted the shot to black and white.
It looks like paper!