'A camera always looks both ways.'

Freeman Patterson says in his book, Shadowlight, "A camera always looks both ways. I have to accept and deal with this fact - the reality that my images are as much a documentation and interpretation of myself."

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.

                          click on any picture to see a larger image

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.

On a Pennington poppy, there is a dusting of blue pollen on the red petals; nature has provided perfect complimentary colours.   My gentle attention has uncovered fairy dust.

 As I step gently among the flowers, I see how the light is falling and how one colour seems to drift into the next.  I understand that my passion for our garden is what sustains my love for picture-taking, and how this love spreads in ever-widening  circles.


                  *I should be receiving the Epson printer next week!*