Week 34 - The Search for Order

Seven Trees

I have spent too much time recently playing the solitaire-like card game Free Cell. It became popular in the mid-90s when Microsoft included it in every Windows version. Without explaining the details and rules of the game, its objective is to make order out of chaos. Photography and other creative arts search for the same.

In Sean Tucker's inspirational book The Meaning in the Making, he touches on this far more eloquently than I can -

“Every time we pick up a paintbrush and choose complementary hues to apply to the canvas, or arrange elements through our camera viewfinders to create a pleasing composition, or press fingers into wet clay to wrestle form from a shapeless lump, we are bending things back toward Order and wrestling them Chaos.”

I often walk past this row of trees ascending a hill that leads up to a fortress. The need for a medieval fort suggests historical turmoil, and the row of trees counters with a sense of harmony. Each tree, chaotic in itself, is spaced at an equal distance.

Presenting them in black and white renders them as form and shape, better accentuating the repeating pattern. Here a sense of order is built into the subject. The more significant photographic challenge is finding order in a more complex setting.

f5.6 1/60 sec ISO 200 August 28, 2022