The same wonder, daily

Friday Fragment #7

For the greater part of a year, I would pause on my walk each day to photograph the same tree. Since that tree resides at the entrance to the field that sits behind my house it might be more accurate to describe that pause a false start, for barely had any walking begun than we were at a standstill. I shared the walk with Bo, our beloved family dog. She would grow accustomed to winning her freedom each day only to have her owner bring that liberation immediately into disrepute as he reached for his phone to photograph that tree. That daily act, for it was every day without fail unless I was working away, provided images of a tree across the shifting patterns of season, weather front, night and day. Its form would be stripped and skeletal through the winter; light and green through the spring; heavy and yellowing into the months of autumn. Often, it would be chiaroscuro captures of the sun falling to orange or red behind the blackened outline of a trunk and branches in the foreground. I learned a lot about looking with the repeat of that same photograph. I learned much about editing my images, too: the relationship between light and dark, how the saturation of a colour-drenched sky at dusk could be pushed, how the muted and foggy palettes of winter could be carefully finessed. It was a daily challenge of my ability to see and capture something beautiful. It’s an exercise I’d recommend to anyone wanting to improve their photographic craft – shoot the same thing again and again, striving to be curious each time that you do. I’m reminded of the moving poem that Clive James wrote in anticipation of his death from leukemia. His daughter had planted a Japanese maple tree in the back garden earlier that year and James was determined to live beyond the summer to witness the splendour of its leaves changing colour (‘Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame’). His cancer would go into remission and he would go on to witness that change for five years more. The same wonder, each year. Trees are so often our elders, this poplar on my daily walk certainly so. I shared that moment each day with a family member we loved so hard, who would pause and wait; a respect, loyal for those thirty seconds or so, as I too stopped in respect, loyal to habit, and an improvement in my craft, and to something much larger, something that James’ poem describes much better than this small fragment ever could.

‘Friday Fragment’¹ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter.

1. ‘Friday Fragment’ always gets started on a Friday, sometimes gets sent on a Sunday!