A photograph can remind you of many things, an emotion such as love or a memory like rain on a summer’s day. This photograph has both a story and a memory behind it. Sometimes there is so much more to a photograph than a two-dimension object. It’s only in its revelation that another layer is shown.
About five years ago I was working in an art gallery where I also sold my landscape photographs. It was near the end of the day when the shopping centre emptied. I started to hear the background music been played over the intercom for the first time that day. This was a sign that the day was nearly over and the last minutes were been played out with the backing track to a bad 80s movie.
Just before I closed up for the day the phone rang. It was a young lady on the phone asking me I was interested to take a photograph for her. I was interested so I inquired about the job. It turned out to be her boyfriend’s birthday in a couple of weeks so she wanted to surprise him with a photograph of a tree. Brilliant, I though to myself, I have loads of photographs of trees. Not any tree, she said. This is a unique tree at Malahide Castle. The tree, she said, has initials carved into the tree by her boyfriend and his father. They had carved the initials when he was a kid. A tree in a forest somewhere in Malahide Castle, good luck finding that without a map Paddy! Okay, how am I going to find the tree? I asked the lady. I’ll e-mail you a map of where the tree is located. Thanks, Ill definitely need a map.
I got an e-mail later that day with a scanned hand drawn map of Malahide Castle and the surrounding park land. That weekend I jumped on a Dart out to Malahide with my camera and map to photograph this tree somewhere in a forest a Malahide Castle.
When I arrived at Malahide Castle it took awhile to get my bearings. I followed the little path through the trees on the left. The path took me across fields and over stone walls. I reached the last forest that was marked on the map. According to the map the tree was ten footsteps into the forest on the right. So, I took the ten footsteps and began to look up and down the trees. When I saw the carvings it was a “eureka” moment. Having travelled out from Dun Laoghaire to photograph a tree in a forest with only a roughly sketched map to navigate it felt like I found a pot of gold!
The photograph above I took while returning from the tree with the carving. It was a warm day and lying on the grass in the park I focused my lens on the daises. I thought the daises surrounded by the grass in the park were similar to my search for the tree in a forest. So that’s the story I am reminded of every time I see this photograph.
Photo Focus
