A saw and a ladder

[jnantz]

john -

there are realty agents in boston who do the same thing for their MLS listing.

-john

[Donald Hutton]

Well, I have a soft spot for trees too. I carry a big roll of string in my pack and it's pretty handy for all sorts of things, not least - holding back intruding branches for photographs. Seriously, armed with a lengh of tough twine, you will not need to go trimming anything and in fact you will find tying back these nasty little beasts far less energy consuming than sawing anything - that bit of reason alone gets a ball of string into my bag ahead of a saw!

Tomorrow morning I venture out in the dark with a much more intimidating problem - the new multi-million $ townhouses I am shooting (north facing so I have to beat the sun... why don't architects make life a little easier for us?) has a large, ugly realtors board in front. I am taking a shovel so that I can remove the offending item for the shots, but I have this feeling that my morning could involve a long diatribe with an over-zealous enforcer of the law should one make a drive by at the moment of unearthing the signage... We shall see.

[Scott Rosenberg]

this thread really surprises me, as i thought john would have gotten absolutely flamed for his suggestion of cutting down a tree for the sake of a photograph. paul, i am truly stunned that you
and i, in the midst of photographers, many of which are nature photographers, i presume, find ourselves in the minority on this point.

come on fellas, take some cable, find a different view, but why damage someone elses property? it seems the height of arrogance to simply cut down a tree because you feel it's intruding on the only angle from which to take a photo.

i wish some of us were more creative with a camera and less creative with a saw!

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi Paul

I'm with you on thad point. I would never destroy something without permission and even then I would try to find an other way. Today it is much easier to get something out of a picture with PS.
So in little Switzerland as an architictural photog you need many times the Schneider 47 mm XL to get a shoot.
I' m not sure if holy A.Adams used a saw I think he was creativ enough not to use one.
But even if he used one from time to time thad does not mean that it is okay!
If every photog would do it it would get a mess, because today are much more people with a camera around, then to the times of A. Adams.
Be creativ not destructiv!!!!

[John Cook]

Got so excited, I forgot to give y’all the web address for Pro Ladder: http://proladder.com/ladders/

Can’t stop now. I’m off to the Home Depot lumber aisle to watch the perverts. What fun! Last week they caught some guy fondling a 2x4.

Then after lunch, I am bowing to the wishes of the PC tree huggers. It’s off to the Federal Building on Main Street to fund an environmental impact study on the back yard before mowing my lawn this Saturday.

You know what Charleton Heston always says, “Saws don’t prune branches, people prune branches”.

Catch you later...

[Nick_3536]

One good thing about Heston is he supported shooting people that cut other peoples trees. Remember it's okay to shoot people that touch your stuff. Don't let the PC people tell you that shooting tree molestors is wrong.

[Tom Westbrook]

Thanks for the kudos on the photo, folks. To avoid unseemly commerce on the forum, see my web site for more info and a bigger image: www.tomwestbrook.com/gallery/Landscapes/yosemite_photogs

[Diane Maher]

There is nothing in John's original post which suggests he goes around and cuts tree branches. The way I read it, is he was told by an older photographer that's what they used to do in the 'old days'. That doesn't imply that it should be done today. The rest of his post dealt with his recommendation for a particular brand of step ladder.

[Ben Calwell]

I have a confession. A few years ago, I composed a nice woodland scene only to discover that a few errant bushes were disturbing the composition at the bottom of the image. So caught up in the moment was I that I stomped and bent them down (to get them out of the image area) as if they were meaningless cockroaches. The moment my foot squashed them down I had an instant sense of regret and remorse at having done so. After I developed the film, they were still in the image as out-of-focus bits of scrub -- they had evidently sprung back into the image area.

[tim atherton]

"come on fellas, take some cable, find a different view, but why damage someone elses property? it seems the height of arrogance to simply cut down a tree because you feel it's intruding on the only angle from which to take a photo. "

You guys keep missing the point - it's not cutting down a tree because it's in the way of a picture (that's the Fred Picker chainsaw gang way). It's cutting down a bit of tree to ADD to the picture of some bleak concrete and tarmac paved industrial facility.

The whole point is to make scads of money from a better picture - which of course is the way of the industrialised free-market world. If you can make more money by digging something up or cutting it down (preferably in large quantities) so much the better - and it's nearly always on someone else's property - just make sure you don't provide suitable recompense, or you will never make a profit.

After all, we cut down hundreds of thousands of trees to wipe our arses on, make our (photo) magazines and newspapers and even build our cameras. What's one little branch from the tree in the median of a desolate corporate/industrial parking lot...? Trees spoil the wonderful sense of endless monotony in those places anyway.