A picture is worth a thousand words. What better way to lend a little perspective to what turns out to be an almost incomprehensibly massive trunk with almost incomprehensibly thick bark? It’s from a Peter Tea post titled ‘The Return of the King.’ See below for a couple more photos and some info on this classic tree.
Way back in January 2009, we introduced Bonsai Bark with a photo of, believe it or not, bonsai bark (see below). At the time I thought it was a pretty good shot, at least until I saw the photo above. Too late to change it now, but maybe we can consider this a re-introduction of sorts.
Peter Tea’s bonsai blog. I know I’ve raved about Peter’s blog before, but how can we borrow his outstanding photos without raving just a bit more? If you only visit a handful of blogs on your web forays, make sure Peter’s Journey of a Bonsai Apprentice at Aichi-en is one of them.
The original photo from our first post a long, long time ago. It’s originally from Bonsai Today 106.
The Beast in 1996. It is simply impossible to grasp the magnitude of this tree from this photo. Actually, it’s nearly impossible to grasp the magnitude of any great tree from any photo (though the photo at the top takes a big step in the right direction). Peter’s caption reads “Zuiou” 1996 Kokufu prize winner, Japanese Black Pine.” His unseen label for the photo is ‘The Beast.’
Showing a tree next to a human, or at least part of a human, is another way to gain a little perspective. In this case the shoulder, arm and hand happen to belong to Jonas Dupuich, the mind and eye behind Bonsai Tonight, another bonsai blog worthy of your attention. Especially if you appreciate top shelf, professional level bonsai photos. This photo, which is from Peter Tea’s blog and presumably by Peter, was taken at the 2011 Taikan-ten exhibition. With apologies to Peter and Jonas, I took the liberty of cropping most of Jonas out. Not that I don’t think Jonas’ visage is worthy (here’s the original), it’s just that we made a decision from the very beginning of Bonsai Bark to de-emphasize people so we can better emphasize bonsai.
