![Red Roots - Paul Pichugin](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/paulmp/WgKwz7RR-imagine-21.jpg)

Over the many years I have been taking photos I've repeatedly found myself in creative ruts and "lulls" where I feel like I'm being un-creative, unchallenged and uninspired. To combat this I set myself "assignments" complete with creative briefs, rules I must stick to and most of the time I include a deadline. One of the series that I've been working on for the last 8 years (yeah I know, that is a seriously long deadline) is one I called "Imagine".

The imagine series are a set of images that aren't quite complete yet, but the brief I gave myself was to imagine an image, or a unique take on something and then go about photographing it. The series will be on-going for some time I think. Most of the time I start with a question "I wonder what it would look like if..." or "how can I look at something completely differently and show people something they've probably never seen before". Other images are as simple as "how can I photographically replicate what that artist (usually a painter) has created", which isn't actually that simple, because I don't necessarily want to get an exact replica of their work. What I usually want to do is pay tribute to their work by capturing something that interprets how their work makes me feel or makes me think of.

The image at the top was actually part of two series. It is part of the Imagine series and another series I shot called "untouched", more about that series in another post though. The story behind it is fairly simple and brief.

I grew up in Brisbane (actually I didn't grow up, just got taller and older) in the state of Queensland on the east coast of Australia. All around Brisbane there are these giant trees that are quite old called Moreton Bay Figs, they have these enormous root systems that we would play in as kids. Fast forward about 30 years and I'm now living in Western Australia. There are a few Moreton Bay figs that have been planted around Perth city and a few other places, but they aren't at all native to the area.

One day I'm driving past some of these trees on my way to a commercial photo shoot and I glance across and notice that the autumn leaves have collected amongst the roots. That got me to remembering playing amongst the roots and climbing the trees as a kid and I started wondering what it would look like from above. I wondered if I could use a drone to get the shot as a helicopter wouldn't work because the rest of the tree would be in the way... and then while I was driving home from my shoot I suddenly decided to try climbing the tree... as a 32 year old, dressed in suit pants, dress shirt and shiny leather shoes.

I pulled over, grabbed my camera.. and tripod and climbed the tree. It was the first tree I'd climbed in about 11 years, it must have looked hilarious to see the grown person struggling to get up the tree with a camera and a tripod. The last tree I'd climbed before this one was on October 20th, 2002... I fell out of an eight meter tall (26 feet) coconut tree and broken my back in two places. Not a pleasant memory as I spent several months in hospital and then a very long time in physio / rehabilitation learning how to walk and balance again. I had those memories going through my head as struggled my way up the tree.

Once up in the tree I set up my tripod to span a few branches, set the camera up and did some long exposures. It was exactly what I had in my head. This shot was straight out of camera, but I've done some different things during the exposure. It is a 15 second exposure, with the white balance adjusted to be quite warm. For the first 12 seconds the photo is in focus and then for the last 3 seconds I've adjusted the focus manually so that it is out of focus.. giving it that "glow" effect. In real life the leaves are closer to yellow / orange than red.

Why did I do all that in camera when it would have been pretty simple to do it in post-processing? Well the answer lies in the name of the second series I was working on at the time. The second series was called "untouched" and the goal was to produce a series of images that looked "photoshopped" but had been done completely in camera. It was more of a personal challenge than anything else. I allowed myself some very minor exposure / contrast adjustments when processing the raw file to a jpeg, but that was it, no touching the colour sliders or anything else. I'll do a whole post dedicated to that series soon.

Hope you enjoyed the story behind this shot, I'll be posting some more from the imagine series soon.

___

Visit my website for more: [paulmp.com](https://paulmp.com/)

Prints are available on Redbubble: [Paulmp on Redbubble](paulmp.redbubble.com)

<center>Social Media:
[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/paulmp/) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/paulmp) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/paulmp) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmp/) </center>

All photos posted are copyright Paul Pichugin unless otherwise stated.