I love the way that the trunk of this tree rises from the earth and then bends and arch. It’s almost like it’s bowing down, out of respect, or reverence. Or perhaps It’s crown is reaching back into the ground beside the grave to comfort and connect. Leaning towards the person buried under the grave, connecting with life and what lays beyond. Passing beneath its arch feels like stepping through a threshold. A natural doorway between the living and the remembered.
Author: Sarah Fender
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The perfection of imperfection
In a moment of synchronicity I had been looking at this photo just before my husband watched a video on Wabi Sabi; the japanese philosophy of the perfection of imperfection.
Nothing lasts, nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect, nothing is complete, everything is ongoing
When I look at this photo, I remember making it. Standing on the beach at Ravencastle, framing the shot. Bringing it home, opening it in Lightroom, adjusting the light, shaping it into something closer to what I felt in that moment. And I remember the frustration too—two tiny flecks of dust on my lens, spoiling it.
But I also remember choosing to leave them. To let the image stand as it was.
Later, listening to the video my husband was playing, I realised something: if I had “perfected” the photo, I might not have remembered all these layers of the experience. It’s perfection would have overshadowed all those memories of the moment of creation.
Imperfection makes the photo so much more memorable to me. The memories around the choice to leave it have turned it into more than just an image. It captures the mixture of joy, elation, sadness and annoyance I felt when creating it.
It’s not perfect. It may not even be complete. But it perfectly captures that moment I felt satisfied. It captures that beautiful moment when imperfection was fine. A reminder that beauty often lives in imperfection and the human spirit lies at the heart of artistic creation. That for the human spirit to shine though art needs to be imperfect.
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Bark and Time
I love visiting Durham.
There’s so much to see—the cathedral, the castle, history and life.
It’s full of buildings, spirituality and thought that has solidly stood the test of time.
But on this day, it wasn’t the grand landmarks that caught my eye. It was the bark of a tree.
I’m not sure what kind of tree it was—perhaps a birch—but there was something almost delicate and oriental about it. The bark was thin, fragile, like layers of paper peeling away. Fragile to the touch, yet protecting a trunk that had stood tall for decades. I imagined ripping a piece off, writing a poem on it, and sending it out into the world—a little letter for anyone to find.
It made me wonder
‘could this be what inspired the first paper?’
Something light enough to carry, pliable enough to bend, yet strong enough to hold stories, weave lives, and endure the ages.
Taking the photo, I felt a connection to the past. Just as paper carries words across time and space, this image captures a moment, a thought, ready to live on for someone else to encounter.
This photo reminded me how fragility and strength can coexist, and how even the smallest details—a piece of bark, a captured moment—can connect us across time and distance.
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