Holt, J., 2025.

Arboreal: Multispecies Industries of Forest Ecology and Documentary Filmmaking as Art of Attunement

It's November, three in the afternoon, a violet gloaming prematurely hovering around the
edges of the day. Within a copse of birch trees, I'm looking through the lens of a camera,
aware of the rumble of a nearby burn, a stray bird-call. Peering more closely at intricate
patterns of lichen embroidering the skin of a tree, I reframe, refocus, dial aperture, shift
myself and the camera in response to the image and shifting light. Using a macro lens in the
low light, it takes time to find focus on a frilled edge of lichen crusting a tiny birch twig,
caught wildly in an almost imperceptible breath of wind. Suddenly, I catch it: a microscopic
spider the size of a birch seed, and its diaphanous threads of gossamer hidden among the frills of lichen. Watching and filming the spider and its tiny movements on an inch of twig -
hiding, waiting, preying - absorbed me until late autumn's early darkness crept in.