Textures: Smooth

Silver Birch Bark.  Fuji F11

19th April 2012

To keep me challenged (and to act as a source of inspiration), I have decided to embark on occasionally posting pictures that form a series based on themes.

Today's picture is the first part from the theme 'Textures'.   I thought of many possibilities for 'Smooth' but quickly realised that texture is all relative; here the Silver Birch bark is very smooth relative to other tree barks, but in comparison to glass, it could be considered 'Rough'.

What really caught my imagination about the Birch bark though is that as the surface gets older, weathered and turns rough, the top layer peels away revealing a new 'smooth' layer underneath.  As humans we lose skin in a similar way, but on a much, much smaller scale.  I thought "wouldn't it be nice if I could peel all in one go", but then noticed that the tree does it a bit at a time and there are always half-peeled pieces of bark that are a few inches across ....  Yuk!