Vista Online

Fall/Winter 2001

"I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree."
-Joyce Kilmer

Anatomy Of A Tree

Photography

Photography intrigues me because it requires that a photographer—using a camera, film, and light—capture the existing beauty in his or her world. The photographic process seems relatively simple, but in reality, as I’m continually learning, it is difficult. Just having had my palette whet by photography a few years ago, I’m beginning to realize an important truth: beauty surrounds me in diverse forms; I simply fail to recognize or to acknowledge it.

To discover this ever-present beauty I must slow down. I must be observant. I must think creatively. Also, I believe that my God, by nature, is beautiful. Thus, in observing the beauty around me, I celebrate Him.

Strolling around the Greenville College campus in mid-January, I found particular beauty in lines, especially the lines of the limbs of bare trees. To me, a leafless tree epitomizes vulnerability and weakness. Naked, the tree exposes tself—each twig, each limb, each branch. This nakedness is beautiful.

Engrossed with this beauty, I forget that this bare tree will soon don its life-giving green garment. Come the warm months of summer, I will have nothing to remind me of the tree’s winter beauty save my memory and my photographs.

Nathan Kratzer

Last updated: July 9, 2001