Wednesday, May 12, 2021

The trees by the road

A study in contrasts
London, ON
May 2021
This photo originally shared on Instagram


What used to be a quiet pathway through a bucolic village to the west of town has been transformed into four lanes of high-speed, never-ending traffic.

The city has now swallowed the village, and you have to look hard for any evidence of what used to be here.

Not that anyone’s looking, hard or otherwise, as they zip through at near-highway speeds on their way to wherever it is that urban dwellers like to go. We’re all so busy, apparently.

So I stand on one side of the road and peer across to the woodlot on the other wide. Miraculously it hasn’t yet been turned into a subdivision, but there’s no guarantee it won’t eventually meet that fate. They call it progress, but I can think of a few other words to describe it.

I tighten my fingers around my camera and slowly walk from one end of the woodlot to the other, the dense growth almost reaching out to me. I try to shoot through gaps in traffic, but even then the cars are almost impossible to completely avoid. Good thing the trees stand patiently as they always have, prepared to take all the time in the world to pose for their moment.

This shot is my favourite of the series, a simple contrast between light and dark, a metaphor, perhaps, for the ongoing struggle to create better places to live.

Or to simply hold onto what we already have.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #hyde #park #forest #tree #trees #walkabout #nature #naturephotography #landscape #landscapephotography #monochrome #photography #Nikon #nikonphotography #nikon_photography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

Related:
Bulrushes, Part 3, November 2020
Bulrushes, part 2, November 2020

No comments: