Photographing my Favourite tree, at Redleaf.
Then printing and exhibiting the photograph.
My favourite tree, at Redleaf is the huge Queensland Kauri Pine. Whenever I go swimming at Redleaf’s Murray Rose Pool, a scenic harbour pool on Double Bay in Sydney. I not only get to enjoy swimming at a sandy harbour beach, the salt water and a spectacular harbour view. I also get a shark-proof swimming enclosure, pontoons, and a boardwalk out over the water. There is also an old harbour side garden, Blackburn Gardens, with historic plantings of huge old trees. When I have finished my exercise and taking in the beach atmosphere of ‘Redleaf’. I like to take the time to visit this grand old Kauri Pine* as I make my way back up to New South Head Road via the public gardens. The size and beauty of this tree never fails to amaze me, I go up to the tree’s trunk and feel the texture of its bark, say hello to it** and thank it for being here. I rest my hands on the trunk and look up into it’s tangle of branches and at the green leaves against the blue of the Australian sky. This tree consoles me, and it’s been something of a muse and inspiration for my photography. It has been here on the Sydney harbour foreshore, growing taller and stronger for 150 years.
When I decided that I wanted to photograph this tree. I knew that I not only wanted to show its size and it’s outline against the horizon, but that it needed to be rendered in a way that reflected my impression of it too. For the picture to transmit the mass of the tree, the weight of it’s trunk, boughs curving and branching out into the abundant foliage of it’s crown. My hope was for the picture to allow the viewer to-also-feel the texture of the bark, to be able to imagine their hands against the trunk of this Kauri Pine on a warm summer afternoon. I wanted this picture to embody my experience of this harbourside sentinel as more than just a tree in the landscape.
Thinking about making the picture and actually making a picture, that I hoped would deliver the ideas about the tree I set out above. Meant having to dig deep into my experience as a photographer. And to contemplate what I really wanted to say about the tree, I needed to experiment with techniques to bring that vision about. I think of this picture as a portrait, in much the same way I think of a portrait with a person. A key difference being that I cannot direct the tree to move this way or that. However I can still interact with the tree as I would any other subject. I can select the best time of day, move myself to change the point of view, and choose a method of photographing that reveals the character I want to show.
The process I chose uses a version of the panorama technique I learned to create full 360-degree panoramas. A dedicated panorama head on a tripod, shooting rows of multiple frames. When making a three-sixty, I use a wide angle lens that captures a large swathe of the landscape with each frame. For the trees, I’m using a tighter lens requiring multiple rows and frames to capture the whole tree. The resulting images are stitched together in dedicated software to form the complete picture. As a photographer who trained shooting film in the 1980s, the whole process reminds me of working with large format sheet film cameras. The going is slow and one needs to be precise, visualise the frame of the final image - and not miss any of the rotations of the panorama head or the picture will have a hole! And just like shooting film, the result is not seen until the picture has been ‘developed’ or in this case, ‘stitched’. In a similar way to large format film photography, the multiple frames stitched together deliver a bigger picture (file) with significantly improved image details over a single shot from the same camera of the whole scene. Due to the complexity of this process this was the only image I created of the Queensland Kauri Pine late in the afternoon on the first of August 2023.
Once I had the final image stitched, edited and ready for exhibition in October 2025. I decided to call this picture ‘The very big and very beautiful Queensland Kauri Pine at Redleaf.’ Which pretty much sums up my feelings about this tree in a very direct manner. I hope that this photograph promotes an appreciation of and an active interest and engagement with trees in a positive way. I am grateful to Fiona Meller from Windowsmiths Gallery who asked me if I would like to show some of my tree pictures in the window. As the gallery is on a small plaza off the street, I decided that one large picture might be more attention grabbing than a series of smaller images, and I was keen to see how the quality of the picture stood up when put to the test of making a large print. I think the resulting diptych of two A0 prints making a 1.7 x 1.2 meter image has certainly fulfilled my expectations.
It was Fiona who also who suggested that this project needed a name, and together we came up with The Significant Tree Project. ‘Significant tree’ being a designation used by councils in Australia for important trees of ecological, ‘historical or cultural value’ that need to be protected.
The Significant Tree Project.
26-09-2020 to 07-10-2025
Windowsmiths Gallery, Shop 81 33 Bayswater Rd, Sydney, Australia 2011
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” - Greek Proverb
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” - Chinese Proverb
“Trees are humanity’s greatest ally in the fight against climate change.” - Leo DiCaprio
*According to the National Register of Big Trees until 2024, this Queensland Kauri Pine, way down here in New South Wales, was the largest living Agathis robusta recorded in Australia.
**My father used to sing the song ‘I talk to the trees’ from the musical Paint your Wagon. Changing the line ‘but they don’t listen to me’ to ‘that’s why they put me away’! Thanks dad, you had a wry sense of humour while practising your art. He & my mother loved trees and bushwalking and instilled an appreciation of nature and the bush in me at a young age.
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