An agricultural engineer (see resume in french), Cedric Pollet rapidly specialised in landscape design. His desire to observe, analyse and seek inspiration in nature, motivated him to study at the Horticulture & Landscape Department at Reading University (England) in 1999. While there, he used a reflex camera for the first time, and fell in love with 2 venerable oaks at the entrance of “The Vyne”, a National Trust Park near Basingstoke.

Since that unexpected revelation, Cedric has been observing trees from a different angle, in his macro-photography of tree barks. Trees are a universal symbol of the strength, beauty and perfection of nature. Bark is a very vital part of the tree and certainly deserves to be better known (see biology of barks).

Cedric has taken over 4,500 photographs of tree barks (conifers, deciduous trees, giant herbs and tree-like succulent plants) representing about 300 different species. All his images are taken in natural light, without flash or filter. His aim is to respect and reflect the exact colours seen in the wild. All details shown in Cedric’s photos can be seen in nature by everyone, without special tools.

Thanks to 2 grants received in 2002 from the “Fondation de France” (www.fdf.org) and the French Youth Minister (www.defijeunes.fr), Cedric travelled for 5 months to discover remarkable trees around the world, especially in Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia) and South Africa. He accumulated many bark pictures for his photo archives (in particular gum tree barks, his favorite tree) and started to work with children, offering them a new awareness of the plant world. This photographic work was recently published in Ushuaia Magazine in 2005 (issue n° 5), a well-known quarterly French wildlife revue.

Since discovering the joy of sharing his knowledge with others, Cedric continues to communicate & teach, with an emphasis on the artistic & pleasurable side. He organizes educational workshops on tree topics, using material (wood, bark, fruits, & fascinating seeds) collected during his many botanical expeditions.

And he continues to answer the call of trees , exploring a new species each year. His most recent expeditions include Canada, where he photographed the astonishing colours of maple trees near Montreal in autumn 2004. Then, in 2005, Cedric lived his longtime dream, photographed the beautiful landscapes of Tuscany. Recently he photographed the Malagasy baobabs, and the fascinating native plants of the spiny bush in southwest Madagascar.