Story behind the picture: "the story of the barkbeetle" (Ireland, 2023)

It was one of those rare occasions that I woke up to a thin layer of snow covering the landscape around our home. Snowy days, over time, have become more and more rare in our region of Germany so I just had to make the most of this opportunity. Happy as a kid on Christmas morning, I quickly grabbed my camera to squeeze in a little walk through the snow before the day started and before the snow surely would have melted away. So I went for a walk through my local forest.

Like so many other spruce forests in Germany also this one has fallen victim to the bark beetle. Weakened by increasingly drier and hotter summers, the spruce trees are more and more defenseless against bark beetle attacks. In forests with extensive stands of pure spruce trees and during climatic extremes such as long periods of heat or drought and mild winters these beetle can multiply explosively. Once infested, the trees are slowly fading away, dropping their needles and having their bark peeled away. In the end they are mere ghosts of what they once have been. The impact of these beetle attacks on German forests has been massive over the last years and it is sad to see whole parts of forests disappearing. Having the destruction of the forest in mind while walking through the snow I knew it would be a bit of a challenge to find a beautiful subject for a more classic wintery woodland image.

However, it was exactly a section of damaged and partly dead spruce trees lit by the orange light of the rising sun that caught my eye. The perfect symmetry of the trunks, the frosty branches standing out bright against the dark background and the sunlight highlighting the cracks in the barks and bare branches of these wounded trees. It was then that I decided to stop looking for a composition featuring a beautiful and healthy tree in the snow, but decided to tell the story of the bark beetle with my image instead. I deliberately put the brightest tree with the most visibly damaged bark in the center of the frame to emphasize the story of the forest and it’s condition. With a warm and cool color contrast I enhanced the mystical atmosphere between the first rows of trees standing in warm sunlight whereas the rows behind it are fading away into the cold shadows. The last remaining needles and branches of the dying trees are highlighted by the frost and
convey a feeling of fading strength.

With this image I tried to capture the fragility of the nature surrounding us. A forest I took for granted for many years was suddenly fading away. But as damaged as the trees might be, in the right light and moment they still remain beautiful and for a fleeting moment the forest came to life again.

Technical Details 
Sony A7IV / Sigma 100-400mm; 249mm, 1/500 Sek at f/9, ISO 100