sierraclub.org - sierra magazine - march/april 2013 - year-life-lonely-oak - that tree: a year in the life of a lonely oak
Photos by Mark Hirsch | Text by Della Watson
Enigmatic images serve as markers for the year's events—this particular storm coincided with Election Day. "I was up at 5 a.m.," Hirsch recalls. "That day I was shooting rural polling places in Wisconsin and Iowa for Getty Images." Squeezing in a few moments between photo shoots, Hirsch knew that he couldn't wait for the weather to change. "So I drove back to my tree," he says. "Snowflakes were melting on the truck window. I deactivated fixed focus and the camera auto-focused on the first thing—the snow drops." In the melted snow, our perception is upended—the familiar tree appears shrunken and inverted.