Sunday 21 August 2022

See the tree how big it's grown


It seems like a lifetime ago now, but, as regular readers will know, during those grim days of Lockdown I started taking photographs of the beech tree that lives outside my front door and posting them on Twitter; egged on by my son James who said I should photograph it every day for a year, I ended up doing precisely that. It was all done very much on the hoof so there was no fixed point where a tripod would stand (it was all hand held from, roughly, the same position) and no fixed time of day when I pressed the shutter (most of the shots are mid-morning, but a couple were taken ad hoc to capture a particular light - or the time that it snowed).

So 365 images (give or take) were deposited one by one into a digital folder whereupon I gave them to James and asked him to 'put them together'. Which, to his eternal credit, he's done. He's also scored it which makes the whole thing pretty unique. Here's the first cut. 

(Just hit the 'play' arrow on the tree  - you don't need a Twitter account to view it)

 

8 comments:

  1. Wow. That was really quite moving, John. Perspective.

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    1. Thanks, Rol. I'm glad you like it. It's the first thing I see when I open the blinds in the kitchen every morning and it still amazes me.

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  2. Wonderful - and as Rol says, moving too. I'd been hoping to see this, and the music is perfect. What a talented pair you are. Long live your friend the beech tree.

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    1. What can I say? The tree must take the credit - I'm (literally) just a Johnny come lately.
      I'll tell James you liked the music. When he was here a while ago I asked him to touch the tree; this is going to sound crazy, but you can tell the music has been written by someone who knows not just what the tree looks like but what it feels like too.

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  3. Fantastic. Love how the speed varies too making the whole film much more moving. That little film would be worthy of an entry to an artsy competition.

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    1. Thank you, Alyson. I love the jerkiness (word?) of it. James' piano is the perfect foil. He said he's got more instrumentation to overlay but I think less is more.

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