Ballingeary Lone Tree, Co. Cork

This tree is about two minutes from my house. I pass it almost every day on the road between Ballingeary and the Keimaneigh pass, and I've probably driven by it a thousand times without stopping. The morning I made this, I was on my way somewhere else entirely. That's often how it works.

The mist had come down over the mountains and was sitting in layers across the ridge behind. Early summer, when everything in West Cork looks like it's been freshly painted. The grass was this impossible green, the light completely soft and diffused through the fog, and the tree was just standing there on that gentle rise with the cloud rolling past. I pulled over, set up the tripod, and spent maybe twenty minutes with it.

The canopy leans to one side from years of prevailing south-westerly wind. Every tree around here carries that signature if you look for it. A record of weather written into the shape of the thing. I find it remarkable to compare this image to how the tree looks now. Branches have fallen, hedgerows have grown up around it, fields get grazed differently. This particular morning caught everything in a state that felt worth recording.

You don't need to travel to the far end of the earth for a good photograph. Sometimes the best work is waiting on the road you drive every day, and the only requirement is that you actually stop the car!