In one giant sequoia’s lifetime multiple generations of humans will be born and die. These enormous trees, native to California, can live for thousands of years. Though that time frame is considerable, writes photographer Beth Moonin her book, Ancient Skies, Ancient Trees, “compared to the age of the stars above, it is not even a blink of an eye.”
A self-taught photographer with a fine art background, Moon has been photographing trees for 20 years. She spent much of that time shooting on film and then processing her images using a 19th-century black-and-white method called platinum palladium printing. For more than a decade she photographed trees all over the world from sunrise to sunset.
An olive tree stands in a grove in Puglia, Italy. Spotting the oldest olives trees isn't difficult, says Moon, because those have the broadest and most twisted, knotted, and gnarled trunks.