CLIP: Picture Perfect, Baby Banyan Tree

Thought I'd add another of my more visual clips from HK Magazine: a cover I took on assignment for a corresponding feature (not written by me) about tree conservation in the region.

When I was leaving Hong Kong last spring, legislators were taking certain measures to ensure the future of trees in the city's concrete jungle, but it wasn't easy. Tree advocates weren't allowed to incur any costs to the government, so they had to think of alternative ways to include them into more broad-based conservation bills, and even enlisted teachers and schools as "Green Spies" who would "adopt" trees, and unofficially keep developers and eager tree-trimmers at bay. While it's illegal to cut a tree whose trunk is more than 30 centimenters in diameter, people do it anyway -- especially with banyan trees -- as tree roots reek havoc on architectural stability and even the strongest of concrete structures.

It was a helluva a photo assignment because the editor of the magazine really wanted me to capture, in just one image, how trees were struggling for survival in the city. I took hundreds of digital images of fully matured banyans (see left), Buddhist pines, wall trees, tree houses, tree altars, trees growing from cracks in buildings and up pipes and I even snuck into several residential buildings to try and capture at eye-level, trees growing on fire escapes and on rooftops.

The cover image they finally used, taken in Sheung Wan, very nearby the editorial offices of the magazine, is a simple, baby Banyan tree, which, reaching full maturity, would probably rip that staircase right out of its foundation. But there it was, small, harmless, beautiful, and certainly in danger of being destroyed.