Revenant

Revenant is for the person still measuring the present against a memory that no longer matches it.
 
I made this in a stretch of bushland near where I grew up, around seventy or eighty acres of public reserve I spent my childhood riding through with friends, on a morning I went back specifically to see it again at sunrise. The trees around the old lookout tower on the crest had grown considerably since I'd last climbed it, and the wide view I remembered no longer existed, replaced by a much narrower one I hadn't accounted for. Wandering the park's quiet roads instead of forcing my original plan, I noticed three trees standing together on a distant ridge, almost but not quite evenly spaced. Using a long lens and a tripod, I compressed the distance between them and the mountain range behind, putting the trees and the near ridge into a soft silhouette beneath a retreating gold sky.
 
What struck me was that the photograph I actually found was better than the one I'd arrived planning to take, and that I only found it once I let the childhood version of this place go and paid attention to what had actually grown in its place.
 
Revenant is for anyone returning to an old place, an old memory, or an old version of themselves, expecting it to match what they left behind. Let it hang somewhere you pass on your way in or out of the day, and it will keep offering the same quiet correction it offered me: what comes back rarely matches the memory, and very often it's better, if you're willing to stay long enough to appreciate it.