Australian Photography – November 2021
English | 78 pages | pdf | 57.4 MB
Welcome at Australian Photography Magazine November 2021 issue
It was not a tree that would have stood out in a forest. Yet it was, nonetheless, a pretty outstanding tree. Its trunk, gnarled and bent, had been left dishevelled and with a distinct, quirky lean from years of coastal winds. Out on its own like a sentry with its many weathered branches twisting to the sky, the lone tree at the Bay of Fires gave a striking backdrop to the orange-tinged boulders that hug the shoreline on Tasmania’s Northeast Coast. And now, sadly, it’s no more.
For visiting photographers, the tree was the kind of location you’d plan your trip around. I remember speaking to photographer Craig Crosthwaite about his image of it back when it graced our cover in August this year, and him telling me he’d been there for three days in a row, with a 3.30am start each day, before he finally walked away with an image he was happy with.
Sure, the tree is just a tree, and it was just nature that brought it down in the end. You too could argue that there’s nothing all that creative about photographing subjects like it that we’ve seen a million times before.
But if you’ve ever had that feeling of excitement that comes from being in front of a location you’ve dreamed of shooting, whether it’s a rare bird nobody has seen or a tree nearly everybody has, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Places like these may be popular, but there’s a reason for that.
In this case, the loss of the Binalong Bay tree could even be a good thing by encouraging photographers to seek out new locations in and around the Bay of Fires.
After all, it’s a beautiful location that’s more than just one tree, and I’m sure it won’t be long before the next icon of the region is discovered, shared, and photographed within an inch of its life. I’ll bet there’s plenty of people in New Zealand’s Wanaka region who’d like visitors there to do the same.
Photography gives us a unique ability to place a sense of permanence on the world – with the snap of a shutter we freeze a moment in time and then have it there, recorded for perpetuity. But this can also make us take things for granted. It’s too easy to think that a location will always be there, or we can always come back and shoot again tomorrow, or we’ll capture that portrait of that family member next time we see them.
But sometimes, and as the tree shows, life has its own script to follow, and we’re merely along for the ride. ❂
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