Learning to see (again)

 

Nothing but a gnarly old tree up close. A long way from the kind of landscape shots I was searching for that morning, but kind of cool, I think, and part of the catch on a Saturday morning in early August, 2009, 16 years ago, if my math is sound. I don't know why I take such pictures, but somehow the detail, the life of the thing is interesting and kind of telling. 

The Saturday I took this picture I happened to be south and west of home, parked out on a dirt road just north of the Christmas tree farm we frequented every Thanksgiving vacation to pick out a tree. That picture above is an odd one because landscape was the operative term that morning.

This is the kind of finagling that drew me out every Saturday, the opportunity to try--emphasis on try--to get big landscape shots into the camera. This August Saturday, out near the Christmas tree farm--it's some distance to the right of the trees out there in right field--I had the opportunity, or at least as good an opportunity as I was able to stumble into. The emerald world was tasseled in gold. 

Still, what is ably present (like the old stump atop the page) is often what's most memorable. In August, all kinds of sunflowers holiday up the countryside. They're legion.

What can you say?--they're legion, but they're just grand.

It's not particularly difficult to get some kind of insect on the sunflowers, but getting them in flight is a real treat. I didn't see this busy bee until I looked at the files on the computer screen, but there he is--or she. And the barbed-wire behind the subject make the whole shot just a bit foreboding. If you can't make a sermon out of that shot, you're not a preacher.

Or this. It's a story, don't you think?--I mean this craggy fence post with the errant nails. In a way, that morning I felt as if I was giving honor away, as I am these many years later by showcasing creation's richness.

I need to tell myself, all these years later, that all you have to do is look.

And here's the monarch, figuratively and literally, on a purple thistle.

Nothing here is rare or exotic. I'm guessing that I could get it all again if I headed out there tomorrow morning. 

But there's striking beauty in what's common, and photography did indeed show me at least something of how to see.