The missed moment #4 – Yellow Ipe

 

Photographing trees is both simple and challenging. As static objects in the landscape, they are relatively easy to frame and compose with the sky, the background, or other surrounding elements. However, this simplicity brings the challenge of creating a standout composition among the thousands of landscape photos where the main subject is a tree.

 

Recently, Brazilian photographer Cristiano Xavier released the book “Treelogia” (Vento Leste Publishing), with 212 pages of tree photographs taken over twenty years of his career. With a focus on aesthetics rather than botany, the compilation of trees featured in the book is far from monotonous and showcases the artist’s versatility in experimenting with different compositions of the same subject—even though each tree is unique and of distinct species.

 

I also greatly enjoy photographing trees. Unlike Xavier, who traveled the world in search of his photos, I like to focus on the trees of the Cerrado. The aluminum toxicity of the Brazilian savanna’s soil causes the trees in this region to have twisted trunks and branches, forming true “trees of life” in many ways. They are aesthetically similar to the mythological figure of the “tree of life” and biologically overcome the challenge of surviving habitat loss and fragmentation, fires, and the naturally poor soil—leached by heavy summer rains.

 

It’s no coincidence that my favorite photo (so far) on this theme was nicknamed Tree of Life. It has been exhibited in various photography salons, published in Landscape Photography Magazine, featured on the cover of the “Cradle of the Waters” essay in Revolve magazine, and praised by the master Araquém Alcântara. However, this photo shows only one side of the beauty of Cerrado trees. When dry, they display their tree of life shape, but when they bloom, they reveal their vitality.

 

This month, while heading to a fieldwork assignment in the transition zone between the Cerrado and the Amazon, I saw countless yellow ipês (Handroanthus ochraceus) along 2000 km of road. This is one of the most iconic trees in central Brazil, and it’s impossible not to be impressed by its beauty. When they bloom in August, they lose all their leaves, and the entire tree turns intensely yellow. Afterward, the flowers fall, and the tree remains without flowers or leaves for a while, until it greens up for months and then yellows again the following August.

 

Despite the hundreds of yellow ipês I saw along the way, one caught my attention the most. It was late afternoon, and the soft sunlight illuminated that tree. The intense yellow, contrasting with the dark, already shadowed forest in the background, seemed perfect for a good photo. The problem with traveling by car is the constant urge to stop and take photos along the way, which isn’t always possible. As happened with the yellow Beetle in the first missed moment, I couldn’t stop in time to take the portrait. There was nowhere to park on the highway and no time to turn back to capture that good light moment, illuminating only that tree in the landscape.

 

So, that yellow ipê, like the yellow Beetle, joined the selection of photographs I wish I had taken but that remain forever recorded only in my memory.