In sunlight, it's a vibrant green, and passersby guzzle beer out of glass bottles before resting underneath it. At sunset, it's a dark shadow with sinewy limbs, and a team of runners rushes past. At nighttime, it blends in with a grey sky.
It is a single, small tree near Lake Vättern in Sweden, unremarkable to most who visit it, but to one photographer, it's a subject worthy of an entire Instagram feed. The account, @thebroccolitree, includes hundreds of photos taken from the same vantage point, at different times of the day and in changing climates.
The man behind the account, Patrik Svedberg, walks by the willow each day on his morning commute. Two years ago, he decided to take a picture of the tree to commemorate its importance to him on his cracked iPhone. He writes of his unique story on his site, "The tree is the protagonist, but rather a passive one, letting the plot unfold around it. Each photo contains a story of its own. It’s all in the details and very often with a humorous twist. Just 'beautiful' would bore me to death."
Like Monet's Cathedrals -- or, y'know, Lil BUB's charming, beloved tongue -- the tree is the unchanging focal point of the images, while everything around it transforms, marking the passing of time.
Svedberg writes that he chose an ordinary tree for this very reason -- "no buried vikings or epic battles in the past, to my knowledge" -- and believes his Instagram feed is telling its story for the first time.
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