Photography + other parts of one's life

post #64

      Welcome to still more of the essay about illustrating Counting on the Woods -- we're up to section 5, which took place in mid-July 1997.  Next week I will post the last section.  Two weeks from now is Christmas, and I won't do a post that week.  I couldn't give it the full attention I try for, and most folks wouldn't have time to read it anyway!  I will happily return here on New Years Day.

      

       section 5:  I DO HAVE AN OTHER LIFE

     

      One picture left, three days to do it in.  Sounds easy.  Luckily by this point I am so far removed from reality that nothing seems too much.  Not even having Emily's family of four for their first visit, for 36 hours, not even getting ready for a nineteen day trip to visit family, having a potluck for 23 people the third night, or making a four hour round trip to Lexington to drop off two last rolls of slides.  (Thank goodness the book's author is able to pick them up later, sort through them, and send some off to New York.  Which ones, I wouldn't know.)  Eight trees?  What could be challenging about that?  I am surrounded by one hundred acres of trees.

      Of course there is a clear reason why this shot is the last one.  I have tried many tree views, but it feels impossible to get only eight.  Or just nine.  Or five and five.  My original innocent Dark Ages plan was to find the tree groupings and then put the kid in one of the trees.  But I was being "stumped" by such logic.  I had already tried ridge lines, cow fields, inner woods, east-facing wooded hillside as well as west-facing ones, and fortunately, field edge trees.  

      It turns out I had at some point been on the edge of some field and had made a shot of eight trees that worked pretty well, though I felt I could do better.  [Remember, the Kyle-in-the-tree photo I want to use ended up showing him in two trees, so I now needed eight in order to match the ten trees in the words.]  But where had I been to find that grouping?  I'm  surprised it's so hard to relocate the precise place.  I usually remember clearly where I've been and what I saw there.

      This is when the three days actually make a difference.  My brain had time to sift, and I had time to reenact some earlier tripod locations.  All that other stuff in my life simply went on without my full participation, and of course with no problems.  The kids and my husband did the potluck, Emily entertained her family, our neighbor, Michelle, stayed in our house while we were gone and cleaned the house at the beginning and at the end of her stay  [thanks again, dear friend] -- and broke up with her boyfriend!

      What I finally discovered was that those eight trees could be viewed only through my trusty 300 mm lens.  The image on the slide doesn't exist to the natural eye.  Luckily that field was only a short walk from the house.  And I found the place in time to film the trees in the Sunday evening light --  leaving the potluck briefly --  and again early the next morning, the last day I could film, the day I went to Lexington. 

      Someday the world will see a straightforward photo of eight tree trunks, one picture out of many, in a book, one of many, many.  But I will always count eight trees as a miracle.

a study for the trees page

a snap of the final result: two plus eight 

hard-to-count trees on this hillside!

hard-to-count trees in this summer's steamy forest

turning to the page before: nine vines, earth to sky they climb

a remembrance and a tragedy

post #41

   On July 2, in 2005, almost exactly eight years after I took this photo, the child seen here died.  This year, with this post, I want to share a bit of his story, and some of the photos I had taken of him.

       

       Counting on the Woods, the picture book by George Ella Lyon which I have mentioned in earlier posts, doesn't have a child in the words, but, as the illustrator, I felt a child was at the heart of the story.  So I asked my neighbor, Kyle, if he would want to be photographed for my book.  No pay involved.  Four photos of him ended up in the book, and one on the dust jacket.  For three of these, he and I went out into the woods, and, for the sycamore (see above), I went to his house. 

       Kyle was ten at that time; he was 18 when he died from abusing prescription drugs with friends.  He had graduated from high school a month earlier.  

      His family lost a son, a grandson, a nephew, a brother.  His death is part of an epidemic that has had enormous impact in Appalachia as well as across our nation.  We Americans have not yet been resolute enough to insist on finding life-saving solutions to stop this needless devastation.

      
       After the funeral, at their home, family members drove the coffin to the hillside family cemetery which overlooks their home.  I took only two pictures of them leaving, the end of a roll of film.  I felt since they were used to my taking photos of Kyle that they would understand I was taking this last one as a tribute to him, and as my way of showing my appreciation and affection for their child, a fine human being who had become my friend.

 

        In this last photo, taken a week ago, Kyle's family's home is visible to the right of the pine tree.  I was trying to show the lay of this land and a family's connection to it and to each other.  I am writing this post today with their full support. They miss Kyle a great deal.

     I am reminded that the importance of a book is in all the stories it can tell.  So thanks again, Kyle, for how at home you were in the woods and for understanding what it was we were creating together.  It means a lot to me that you were always proud of the book you helped to make. 

     Margaret Mead reminds us: "Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."  I'm sorry and sad that a young person's life ended way too soon, and I write all this in hopes we get our butts in gear in time to halt this senseless destruction.