As a REALTOR who specialized in the sale of historic homes, I always enjoyed photographing the properties I marketed for sale. I would often take up to 100 or so pictures. In addition to the “normal” photos of the front of the house & all of the requisite “showcase” shots of the interior, I would snap a bunch of extra photos — including the beams, the old floorboards, the attic framing, the fireplace mantle, and so on. And on the exterior, I often took a couple of dozen pictures in order to get a shot that looked “just right.” I often found that my favorite photographs were those that included an extra, somewhat “romantic” element — sometimes a stonewall, or a nice trellis of flowers, but most often, it was an old tree.
On a practical level, a tree often helps to “frame” a house in a photograph, with the tree’s trunk on one side of the house, and the branches & leaves above. But I always believed that there was also something romantic & emotional about an image of a historic property with a tree — especially old, ancient trees that had seen the years pass by along with the house’s long string of owners. There is something majestic & “weighty” about a stately old tree standing sentinal over an old farmhouse or estate. All of the photos in this post (above & below) were taken by me over the years as I marketed historic houses in Connecticut, and I felt that all of these properties . . . and their photos . . . were enhanced by the presence of at least one old tree.
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