My dad loved macro photography. I remember the Christmas before he got sick that I went to visit my mother and him at their home outside of New Orleans. One morning, he told me to call walk down the long driveway and said about halfway down I’d see a tiny little pine tree sprouting up between the cracks in the concrete. I headed out with my camera and got a shot of the seedling…it was less than a quarter of an inch tall. I showed the picture to my dad and he smiled. “You know the thing I love about macro pictures?” I didn’t answer and he continued….”When you look through the camera for a macro picture, you see things that the rest of the world misses…” I think that sums up my dad – he often saw things that the rest of the world missed. Sometimes, I think that was a source of anxiety to him, but at least in the world of photography, it was a source of joy for him. I love taking pictures with my macro lens, but I never seem to take it out that often. So,I’ve decided that a least once a week, I’m going to put my lens on my camera and head out, searching for things that other people might miss.
Today was crazy – work was crazy, the girls were crazy, scouts was crazy. Or maybe it was just me that was crazy. Sometimes my procrastinating skills are a real hindrance. Just as twilight was coming through the trees, Abigail and I walked out to the empty lot beside our house. It’s overgrown with flowering weeds right now – the owner lives out of town and only cuts the lot a couple of times a year. The weeds are actually pretty right now, particularly with the fading afternoon light dancing between the white flowers and the dark green stems. I wanted to capture a picture of the flowers. When we walked over there, though, I realized that the whole lot was bustling with hundreds and hundreds of winged creatures. Blue dragonflies, some humongous and some small. Teeny tiny little red butterflies that I tried unsuccessfully to capture. And these guys…..some kind of moth that looks almost translucent.
