Landscape Architecture, June 2013

Benjamin Swett was driving along the Long Island Expressway one fall day in 2004 when he saw it: a small, upright honey locust with brilliant golden leaves. He pulled over and grabbed his camera. He had been photographing trees for several years, initially for his job at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation—where he authored a guide to the city’s 120 designated “great trees”—and now, as a freelancer, simply because he loved to.

“I kept photographing trees; I was sort of obsessed with them,” Swett recalls. “Even though I was doing a lot of other kinds of work, I kept driving around the city taking pictures of trees I knew.”

Full story available in Landscape Architecture’s June 2013 issue, p. 164

Photograph by Benjamin Swett