One Christmas my dad gave me my first record. It was Elvis Presley's "Guitar Man." I loved the song, played it hundreds of times.
It inspired me to become a guitar man myself. Well, until I started playing guitar. I wasn't very good at it. Fairly soon after I switched to violin, which I’ve played ever since. I mean, not non-stop ever since but regularly ever since. We’ll, not on a strict schedule but often enough. I look back at that time and wonder how my life would’ve been different if I’d stuck with guitar and not gotten mixed up with trees.
In any case, several Christmases after I received "Guitar Man," Mom bought me a Holga 120 camera for Christmas. I loved it until that first and only time I used it. I took it outside on Christmas day and I realised what egomaniacs trees are. As beautiful as photos from the Holga are, trees just ruined it for me.
Have a look.
That's a beautiful photo, isn't it? It's got a double-exposure effect, plus a lovely, snow-covered field.
If you're not familiar with a Holga 120, it's a plastic, very low-tech camera. My mom loves art from the '60s and the camera allows for '60s-style effects, like double-exposures and lens flares. "It's a hard camera to control," she said. "Light leaks in, you'll need to tape it up as you see fit. I think you'll enjoy seeing what it does." It is a really fun camera: There's a plastic lens, one shutter speed and in order to advance the film, you forward the film yourself. Once you get used to it, it can allow for some really cool effects with double-exposures, light leaks and vignetting.
Here's one that's similarly nice:
I love nature photography, especially in the winter. But please notice: in the photos above the trees are beginning to creep into the frame.
Trees are one of the biggest challenges in outdoor photography.
They really crowded around me for this next photo—brustling up, trying to get into frame. Eventually they turned the earth sideways so the people in the photo fell out, leaving only trees behind. So many humans were hurt taking this photo:
Not many trees in this one, so Dad didn't slide out of frame:
By the way, that photo of Dad was several years after he gave me "Guitar Man".
In the next shot, you’ll see the trees trying to sneak into the frame—but I was onto their game!
I got the photo without many trees because I knew their moves -- they were some fast trees, ready to jump into frame. I knew what I had to do. I had to act fast. I triggered the shutter, then sprinted into place like a flash before it opened:
If you study the bottom of the frame, you’ll probably guess what happened a few seconds later. That’s right—trees swarmed the area.
A good photographer waits for what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment.” Most people don’t know he meant the moment before a tree or owl ruins your shot. “You gotta be fast,” Cartier-Bresson said. "Because trees are everywhere. They never leaf you alone!" He said it in French, but I’ve translated it here. He was my mom’s friend's uncle's photography teacher for one semester and that's when he babysat me once when I was a kid, that’s how I know these things.
Anyway, I learned the trees’ tactics. I knew to run away from them before I began this next shot. I pretended to look at my watch for several minutes to throw them off, then snapped this photo:
I think you'll agree that the photo above was worth the effort.
But the photo below makes me sad.
I had several friends in this one, but the trees pushed them out of the frame:
Maybe it's not clear from the photo but the reason the photo is at an odd angle is the trees turned the world sideways in order to get the photo. They’ve got strong roots, and they use them to control the earth, pushing and pulling it to whatever they direction they need for a good photo.
When the trees did that, my friends who were in frame got thrown into the sky and drifted into space. Most of them live on the moon now. Sometimes I look out at night and see them playing baseball up there. I love them, but they suck at baseball. You might say, “Maybe that’s because there’s not much gravity on the moon?” But no. They just suck at baseball. They don't hit the cut-off man on relay plays from the outfield, and they can't bunt. I feel bad for them.
So anyway, the trees ended up centre stage and everything is 90 degrees. Trees. I’ve thought about those trees and "Guitar Man" many times.
While I love "Guitar Man", it never sparked a deep love of Elvis. I recognise he’s a legend, but the only song of his I ever play is "Guitar Man," and that's partly because of my dad.
As for photography, I still love it. I’ve learned to work with trees. I recognise their insecurity, and how it makes them act out and seek centre stage.
You might recognise some of the trees in the photos above. A few are on Broadway now, or in the West End. Then again, some were chopped up for firewood. Showbiz can be rough.
Once, while I was at work, I think a tree broke into my house and took my copy of "Guitar Man". I can still hear it sometimes, echoing from the forest when the trees play it late at night.
They took my record player too.
Stupid trees.
