There can be few more agonisingly, chilling sounds for me than the relentless, angry howl of the chain saw as it does its fearful deed. Like a single shot from the poachers rifle that brings down perhaps 80 years of the magnificent existence of a bull elephant, so the wretched chain saw in one terrible instant, brings to an end often needlessly the noble and wonderfully complex life of the tree. In the mind of the goggled and helmeted operator, there will be little understanding of the long term and far reaching consequences that each single act of felling a tree will have and tragically has already had on our sacred planet.
Of course, our dependancy on soft wood is in many ways as great as it ever was and much acreage is devoted to their production and speedy harvest. No, it is the venerable elder statesman tree that has witnessed the passing of so much turbulent history; the mighty oaks, sycamores, plane trees, the stately beeches and numerous other species that should have rights for they have surely earned them.
As Richard Mabey reminds us in his eloquent introduction to The Tree( David and Charles 1990 ISBN 0-7153-9481-9) “ They are the architectural climax of evolution, the longest lived organisms on earth, and even in their present depleted ranks still provide the world’s largest engine for converting the sun’s energy into living tissue”
Landscape photographers will relish and honour the tree in all its variety of kind and size. From the intensive cash crops of poplar plantations, every one meticulously planted in regimented lines for maximum return to the great plane and lime tree avenues of country estates.
The monumental sequoias some of which have stood for over three thousand years to the “beaten up” appearance of many an English church yard yew and an Assisi olive that a monk once suggested to me was probably growing during the life of Jesus.
As a long fallen, sculptured branch that has lain where it fell with all its sinuous muscle still evident for the contented photographer conveniently to use in the foreground of the image,the tree as a single element or in quantity carries with it a magnificence and a pathos that can lend much gravitas and will contribute to and support the photographers aesthetic intention.
As a small boy living in the New Forest, I would stare up in wonder to watch the boughs of giant oaks with their great bulk of thick summer leaves careering from side to side in a full blown gale. The sound of wind and the leaves resistance from an entire forest is from the same family of natural sounds for which we all care so much. The deep resounding bellow as a heavy sea slams against the cliff face and forces air up through a blow hole on the north cornish coast and in contrast, listening to the music of a light october breeze filtered by the brittle autumn amber leaves of a stand of lombardy poplars.
The diminutive almond tree in Andalucia which for eleven months of the year, is unable to compete with others in the grandeur stakes, for the month of February offers to landscape photographers one of the most breathtaking, almost dream like experiences. Like one hundred thousand corps de ballet, every almond tree is dressed in a frilly tutu and the great breadth of the Andalucian landscape is for a moment dusted in muted pink. We celebrate the tree in all its performances.
It is within this climate of acute and finely tuned consciousness that the landscape photographer will operate. The mind soaks up the meaning of the place and as the image to be made is nurtured and loved into shape, the shutter is ultimately depressed and a melding of everything is hopefully achieved.
Ansel Adams was attributed with saying the sound of the shutter being released was “the most beautiful sound in the world”. Despite its enjoyable and reassuring sound, I am of the view that in comparison to the often intense preamble that goes before that moment of releasing the shutter, the actual act of doing so has a rather poor, anticlimactic feel to it.
Idealist though I may be, I am convinced as I think my chums are that certainly in the developed world those who contribute to the shaping and adoption of global policies would do well to attend more to the natural rhythms of our earth. All peoples on the planet would surely benefit and a greater reverence for the tree might be as good a place to start as any.
10/12/2005 |
