B&W gallery: Pythagoras

Wimbledon Common at Christmas. Weather moderate to good. Bright dappled sunlight

through the trees. Wandering off-piste, as I usually do, I was rewarded by this scene. It

looked as though a school class had had a maths lesson here, and had been acting out

Pythagoras's theorem. But, typical schoolkids, they just left everything lying around for

someone else to clear up. Thankfully.

Trees are relatively easy to photograph as long as they can be isolated from a (usually)

messy background. How many pictures have you seen of rows of plane trees along French

avenues, or gnarled old oaks standing alone in the middle of a meadow, or exquisite topiary

in an English country house garden? This is one of my favourites among my own arboreal

output, for its intriguing design and its chance encounter. Had the fallen branches been

arranged deliberately, had something educational been going on here, has a child suddenly

decided to become a mathematician, or to give up maths completely? We'll never know, but

I like to think that someone now knows what the square on the hypotenuse is.

Wimbledon Common at Christmas. Weather moderate to good. Bright dappled sunlight through the

trees. Wandering off-piste, as I usually do, I was rewarded by this scene. It looked as though a

school class had had a maths lesson here, and had been acting out Pythagoras's theorem. But,

typical schoolkids, they just left everything lying around for someone else to clear up. Thankfully.

Trees are relatively easy to photograph as long as they can be isolated from a (usually) messy

background. How many pictures have you seen of rows of plane trees along French avenues, or

gnarled old oaks standing alone in the middle of a meadow, or exquisite topiary in an English country

house garden? This is one of my favourites among my own arboreal output, for its intriguing

design and its chance encounter. Had the fallen branches been arranged deliberately, had

something educational been going on here, has a child suddenly decided to become a

mathematician, or to give up maths completely? We'll never know, but I like to think that someone

now knows what the square on the hypotenuse is.

The square on the hypotenuse...