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Thread: A saw and a ladder

  1. #11

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    538

    A saw and a ladder

    There are city slickers who pay thousands to have some exotic twig planted in their commercially manicured yard. And there are southwestern dudes who agonize over trying to get anything at all, even remotely green, to artificially grow in their patch of dessert.

    Here in the foothills of the Berkshires where rainfall is more than plentiful, maple trees grow wild, choking out lawns and spare lots. Forests have completely overgrown what were 19th century farms. It is not uncommon during a walk in the deep woods to come across a rusty hundred year old plow.

    Some of you no doubt require anal PC regulations about ungentlemanly behavior toward branches. Here, I require $500 worth of men with chainsaws every few years to beat them back and haul them away, lest the lawn vanish entirely.

  2. #12

    A saw and a ladder

    I live on a tree farm. You can bet that if someone comes along and prunes branches off my trees (or worse, fells them) I'm going to be just as pissed as a farmer whose had some bozo come along and mow down his crops.

    If you want to cut up trees, I'm fine with that. I like trees, but I cut them down when it makes sense to do so - thinning, for instance.

    Just don't cut up MY trees. And, by simple extension, don't cut up trees that don't belong to you. I don't see a general prohibition against vandalizing things which don't belong to you simply because they happen to interfere with your photographic plans as 'anal PC regulations'.

    I just think it's common courtesy. That might be anathema to the over-regulated folks in Massachusetts, but here in rural Washington we think it's a nice way to get along with others.

  3. #13

    Join Date
    Nov 1999
    Location
    San Clemente, California
    Posts
    3,804

    A saw and a ladder

    "Some of you no doubt require anal PC regulations..."

    Not sure about requiring them, but some of us must cope with them.

  4. #14

    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Gulfport, MS, USA
    Posts
    873

    A saw and a ladder

    Come on, Y'all...give John a break! He's talking architecual photography, most likely commercially; the customers I normally shoot for would gladly loose a random leaffy branch to get a really good shot of their new multi-million dollar extravaganza (or even their new $50,000 metal office building)! I'm sure he asks permission before he starts chopping and chooses a cut where it leaves the least possible gap in the bush. I've used this trick many times myself.

    Ladder...I like the old fashioned ones with the flat step on the top...the head off of my Davis and Sanford tripod can be mounted on a base bolted on top made from an appropriately sized plumbing pipe and a collar with four screw holes around the edges. I do wish it was steadier, though...you can often enlist the client to hold onto it so you don't go "head over heels"!!

  5. #15

    A saw and a ladder

    John bubba, if you are not selling that maple wood you are a fool....have you any idea how much maple furniture goes for? Hell, forget photography, learn some wood working and laugh all othe way to the bank...

  6. #16

    Join Date
    Jan 2001
    Posts
    4,589

    A saw and a ladder

    Personally, I'd love to see the Park Service chop down those big tall trees which have grown into the view at Yosemite's Tunnel View. Fat Chance!
    Wilhelm (Sarasota)

  7. #17
    Moderator
    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Location
    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    Posts
    1,278

    A saw and a ladder

    Yeah, it's the trees that are in the way...


  8. #18

    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Gulfport, MS, USA
    Posts
    873

    A saw and a ladder

    Tom, that is a truly GREAT shot!!!

  9. #19

    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Posts
    538

    A saw and a ladder

    I guess you guys will all just have to come to the LF Conference to see what I am talking about. Trees grow here in spare lots and along the roadside like crabgrass and dandelions.

    Less than a mile in three directions from my in-town home are 20-acre-plus areas of tree saplings, scrub brush and ugly, deformed wild trees too closely packed and growing into each other.

    Two blocks in the fourth direction is the old, abandoned Diamond Match factory with a four-acre parking lot filled with wild sumac bushes and trees along the chainlink fence and coming up trough cracks in the cement.

    Over twenty such abandoned factories (Westinghouse, Gilbert & Barker gasoline station pumps, John H. Breck shampoo, Columbia bicycles, Chapman Valve, Bosch diesel products, Savage shotguns, Package Machinery Corporation, Hampden Chemical, Indian Motorcycle, National Blank Book, Standard Electric Time school clocks, Church toilet seats, Dan Wesson Arms, etc.) within a ten-mile radius. Some with trees inside the buildings. Everybody went to China, ya know.

    Downtown, behind the abandoned magnificent old train station is more acreage of rusty tracks, junk and wild bent-over, gnarled trees.

    Many old Victorian houses have burned and been torn down. Within five years the lots have completely overgrown with trees.

    My rather slack next-door neighbor whose property is lovingly known around here as “Sloppy Hollow” has many maple trees growing out of his uncleaned roof gutters.

    Bring your cameras to the conference and do a post-apocalypse photo essay on the industrial revolution going back to nature.

    But don’t lose too much sleep over Springfield’s trees.

  10. #20

    A saw and a ladder

    The fact that the trees are abundant does not justify cutting them. If they don't belong to you, leave them alone.

    The fact that the trees are overly dense, deformed, and growing in 20 acre plus groves does not justify cutting them. If they don't belong to you, leave them alone.

    The fact that, left alone, many places will quickly fill with trees, shrubs, and other vegetation does not justify cutting them. If they don't belong to you, leave them alone.

    The fact that they grow out of your slovenly neighbors rain gutters does not justify you cutting them. If they don't belong to you, leave them alone.

    I guess I don't understand what's so difficult about the concept of not destroying something which doesn't belong to you. Am I alone in this viewpoint?

    Maybe I just don't understand. Perhaps in Massachusetts, you're free to consider everything you see your property, and destroy it on a whim.

    Out here in the Pacific Northwest, we're not quite so civilized. We still believe in private property.

    Here's a hint for you sophisticated MA residents - when you come to photograph in the palouse, the fact that the wheat grows in unfenced fields that are hundreds or thousands of acres does not justify you driving your car out into the field to get just the right camera angle. When you do, you can expect the enraged farmer to drive over you with his tractor. Worse, the courts will decide in his favor when you try to sue. Even worse, I will cheer heartily when it happens.

    Would you like it if I remodeled your house with my Stihl 021 with an 18" bar? How about if I decide that I don't like the look of your tires, and decide to beautify them with my handy 20 foot Silky pole saw?

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