The Writing Tree

Jamie has a new book of poetry coming out, so we got together for an author headshot for the back of the book. Since one of the poems is about her “writing tree,” I thought it might be cool to shoot at the tree.

More pictures below.

When I first met Jamie several years ago, I remember mentioning to her that Bradley and I had loved to go to those woods and hang out on the huge fallen tree above the pond. We’d been going there since Bradley was 4. He’s now 15, and Jamie is a grad student at Harvard. (WOW!)

Jamie responded by telling us that she loved to go there too, to be alone and write poetry. The tree thus came to be known as, “The Writing Tree.”

When Jamie and I were there, I was shooting while standing on top of the huge rootball. I kind of wish I had a picture of that! I love this one of Jamie!

I wanted to put a few pictures up on the blog for Jamie so she could get an idea of how I’d crop pictures for use on the back of the book. If I chose a headshot, I’d choose this one, and I’d crop it in close, like this.

I kind of like this one too. Which one do you like better? Or maybe it would be cooler to use one that shows the tree since one of the poems in the book is about the tree. (In that case, I like the one at the top of the blog the best.)

The water was really high the day we were shooting.

I like the mossy quality of the colors.

We were worried that the tree wasn’t stable enough to walk on, but it was fine.

I kind of like this cool headshot too.

I was trying to get a shot that would be similar to a shot I have hanging on my wall of Bradley walking on the tree when he was 4 (see below).

Check out how much that tree has decayed in 11 years! Cool, huh?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 8:49 pm and is filed under portrait and tagged with headshots, neighbor trees, portrait. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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5 Responses to “The Writing Tree”

1. Jeanne says:

   June 10, 2010 at 7:01 pm

   Interesting that Jamie found a spot for writing that you had so many years before with your son. I like the ninth photo where she has her legs dangling over the water. Out of all the ones with the tree, this looks most likely how I imagine she might sit with a notebook and write. BTW, where is the writing tree?

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   • Julie Walton Shaver says:

     June 10, 2010 at 7:38 pm

     The Writing Tree is in Woodwild Park, but in my family, we’ve called that little area “Small Circle Woods” since Brad (who is now 15) was a little kid. Incidentally, there is another giant tree in the park right now that looks like it’s going to fall any day. Hunched over and surrounded by yellow police tape, all it will take is a good storm I think.

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2. linda from edison says:

   June 1, 2010 at 12:02 am

   What I would do……. use the top photo. The way she has her head tilted up (looking up, leading with her chin) gives me the “vibes” that she is getting inspiration from the tree. Then I would take the first close-up (I like it much much more than the one underneath it), reduce it and drop it in the space on the ride side of the same top photo where the trees are as an insert.

   I’d play around reducing the opacity maybe to see if some of the texture of the background trees would come through on her face. Maybe. Not sure.

   I like the close-up with the sunglasses the least.

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3. Jamie says:

   May 23, 2010 at 9:44 pm

   Amazing, Amazing, Amazing!

   And so much fun!

   Thank you, Jules!

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   • Julie Walton Shaver says:

     May 23, 2010 at 9:46 pm

     You’re welcome! It WAS fun!

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