It is Sunday afternoon, the summer solstice, and it will be light still for hours. Friday evening, I was in the garden photographing some multi-layered blue geraniums until 9 pm.
I stopped, more because I was tired, than because of the fading light. These beautiful evenings are a photographer's dream.
Whenever I complete a series of photographs, I immediately transfer them to iPhoto and begin the first level of culling. As I watch them downloading on the screen, I experience a sensation similar to the incredible high I used to feel when I had an intense day painting in the studio.
In that moment, I so loved what I had painted, only to face the canvas, the next morning, without the adrenalin rush. Parts of the work sang, other parts needed a fair bit of work: it was the act of doing that had excited me. So it is with photography.
When I went to a doctor's appointment last week, I was asked to list my sports & recreation. Tempted as I was to write 'sky-diving' and 'roller derby ace' (to see if anyone really reads the forms), I wrote gardening & photography. Really, I could have written photographing in my garden. Or, to be more accurate, being deeply absorbed and soul-connected to my plants, with my camera the vehicle for this intimacy.
Subtlety and boldness. Contrast and harmony. Tightly-held buds and browning petals. With my fabulous macro lens, I move ever-closer to my subject, delighted when I notice that I have unknowingly captured 'on film' a fat white spider or a black small beetle.
*I should be receiving the Epson printer next week!*
