More Flowers
As the intro suggests, we’ve had a bit of rain lately and Ann’s plant really seems to enjoy it. We’ve waited and waited for them to start opening up and after a cluster of them opened up around the same time, I decided I couldn’t hold back and grabbed the camera.
Again, I decided not to get formal about things and hand-held the camera. I just wanted to enjoy the pleasure of composing in the frame and making different images of the different buds, not slowed down by a tripod and the rigors doing so physically and mentally imposes on image making.
I really have to thank Ann for a few things; a lot of things actually. She’s introduced a joy of looking at birds and plants that I never really had before. Yes, I would look at them, and occasionally even photograph them, but I didn’t look at them in the same way, or for birds, listen to them as well. Now, I’m just as likely to hear a bird song and stop to open up the Merlin App to see what bird is making it as Ann is. Or to stop during our walk to look at an interesting plant near-by (which Ann usually knows) that I’d never noticed before. Or just watch the birds at our feeders, or taking a bath in our make-shift bird bath.
I think that’s one of the things we too often leave behind in our childhood, the act of looking, really looking at something, and the wonder and awe that comes with it. That’s what photography has helped me do - look at something, explore it, and then frame it in a photograph - but it’s the looking that’s key, and that doesn’t need a camera. Look and appreciate. Look and enjoy. Explore and learn.
So I spent a bit of time with my camera, working with one blossom, then another. Seeing how close my macro lens could get (and get it to focus where I wanted it to . . . one of the drawbacks of not using a tripod), and then after the fact, seeing what else the photograph captured that I didn’t see while I made the image.
That’s one of the things I’ve realized with the original flower photo and now these images. There is so much more there than I originally saw in each of the images, and that’s wonderful.
There’s not really much more I can say other than these were exercises. Exercises for the eye and the joy that comes from playing.
Perhaps that’s another thing we unfortunately leave behind in childhood, playing and the joy that comes with it.
Ann suggested I might want to print the original flower images. These other photos make me think maybe so. That would give me yet another way to enjoy these lovely things.
