I would like to write some before-and-after posts about how I edit photos, but this time the before and the after refer to something different.
Climate change effects.
A month ago a place that I photographed a few times and that I quite liked, which is in fact a poplar trees plantation, looked like this.
You could admire and enjoy this light at sunset, with a soft golden glow emanating from the evening mist. This location is just by a road we happen to drive along quite frequently, so sometimes I had the chance to stop and capture an image.
I really, really loved that small artificial forest. I couldn’t wait for autumn to kick in to discover how the trees transformed during fall. You see, poplar trees produce gorgeous yellow leaves…
Now it looks like this.
A downburst destroyed hundreds of trees only in this plantation. Along the road, we could witness destruction for many kilometers. This kind of events used to happen once in a lifetime, but now they happen many times a year.
In my hometown Milan, Italy, it is estimated that around five thousand trees were destroyed only in the 2023 summer due to extreme storms and downbursts.
I believe we should think more about these events and start planning for them in advance, because they will keep happening.