Canola Tree

A single leafless tree reaches bare branches into flat grey cloud above a canola field in full yellow bloom near Majorca in central Victoria. The dead wood breaks an otherwise open horizon, with power lines and a faint treeline tracing the distance behind it. The field runs in long rows that bend up over a low rise. The contrast between the bare branches and the dense flowering crop below is stark and unadorned.

Brett photographed this on the afternoon of 16 September 2012, on the Nikon D7000 he was shooting at the time. The Landscapes collection covers his wider travel photography across Australia and Japan rather than the abandoned-places work the Lost Collective is built on. The country around Maryborough and Avoca was central Victorian goldfields and is now mixed cropping, so the history of the ground is gold and the surface of it is farming. Canola is a familiar spring crop here. Flat overcast light removes the shadow and flattens the field into a solid block of colour, which leaves the tree as the only vertical interruption in the frame, and the only thing in it that is not growing.