Morning Thanks--joy on scrap iron

Sometimes I’m amazed at what I find in what I shoot.

I suppose if I were a really good photographer, I'd know what's there or control what I get in a shot--but I'm not, and I don't. In the bitter cold not long ago, I wandered around an abandoned farmstead at dawn, through all kinds of junk, most of it festooned with the kinds of “parian wreaths” Emerson celebrated in “The Snowstorm,” a pristine Christmas halo of snow.

When I came back to the basement to see what I had, I fell in love with this shot: nothing but snow on an old implement, joy on scrap iron.

Photography teaches me the beauty of things I take for granted or simply don’t look at, the beauty of common things; and for that, and the revelations that appear in front of me, magically, on my screen in the morning, I’m very thankful.