I Think I Got It

/ Pat / 7 Comments

The entrance to the Naples Botanical Garden is a raised boardwalk through\a canopy of tropical trees with a woodland floor consisting of a wide variety of tropical plants, with a stream flowing down the center. The exit is a parallel boardwalk down the other side of this ecosystem. The stream is part of an elaborate system that takes the water off the parking lot and filters it through the garden into the lakes on the far diagonal corner of the garden.

I linger along this boardwalk, stopping to enjoy the various colors, textures, flowers and seeds that grow under this canopy. And every time I enter the garden, I stop, just as I start up the boardwalk, to admire the beauty of this large-leaved plant – and try to capture with my lens what my mind and soul sees. I can’t tell you how many of these “captures” are lying in my photo trash heap.

I frequently walk around the garden with my 50mm lens because the “formal” garden is small and compact without many long-range vista until I go into the preserve area where the lakes are. This short lens makes my camera much lighter so I can sometimes hold it steady enough without a tripod to get sharp photos of the mid-range images I see, and I step closer for the macro shots. I had also read a review by a photographer who said he usually obtained equally good results by cropping a 50mm image as when he used a telephoto lens because of the overall sharpness of the 50mm glass.

I was using my 50mm lens as I was leaving the garden on a resent visit and after exiting into the “front porch” area at the end of the central entrance/exit board walk area, I turned to look at that wonder group of big leaves – and decided to take a photo to capture the plant within its setting. I was too tired to change lenses for a closeup.

See the big leaves in the central ground?

Today as I was poking around my files, cleaning out some I’m-never-going-to-use photos and playing around with some editing I saw the magic image I needed to illustrate what I found so beautiful about this plant. So you don’t have to scroll back, I’ll do a repeat performance.

How wonderful success looks! I hadn’t been able to get what I wanted from the angle of the boardwalk and found it in a crop from the angle of my exit photo. I’ll smile some more when I visit the garden again this week – but I won’t take any more photos to later throw away.

Wishing you joy in all your endeavors.

Macro Monday: A New Life

/ Pat / 11 Comments

I took this photo at the Naples Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago and I keep coming back to it, intrigued by the movement, the grace, the colors. Most of all I am enjoying the varying thoughts and emotions that this photo of an emerging leaf elicits in a re-emerging me.

I am traversing one of the last stages of my life, possibly with only dying and death lurking somewhere in the future. Yesterday afternoon I attended a Brass Quintet concert at our church and afterwards I was engaged in conversation with a woman I really respect and admire, and who is a few years older than I am. We laughed together that there are a lot of things about being “of a certain age” that we really didn’t foresee and are surprised by.

As I have studied this photo I keep returning to the question, “What am I trying to hang onto and what do I need to let go of?” A couple of nights ago I dreamed about work, a part of my work where I took groups of students to Great Britain for a three week trip to study British culture. I used to really enjoy these trips but stopped doing them over 15 years ago. In the dream we were getting close to leaving for a trip and I hadn’t done anything to prepare for the trip or to prepare the students for travel. In my dream I wasn’t able to do the work because I didn’t have the time, strength and energy – wait, that isn’t dream material, that’s my reality. I do have lots of time now that our condo rebuild is completed, but doing the small tasks of moving in and organizing our nest made us realize that we don’t have the strength and energy to putter and work that we had just 10 years ago. This realization was a real gut punch for me.

We did it! …but we had to budget our time; Jim had to budget his energy so his body can continue to heal; we are both realizing that our brains think we have more strength than our muscles actually have and our bodies just don’t move as fluidly as we vaguely remember; and we both get befuddled and confused when our brains go all crazy on us because of fatigue and pain. These things aren’t new to me because I have had Fibromyalgia for over 15 years, but as Jim’s health problems have diminished his abilities I don’t have him to pick up my slack. We have had to learn a new dance together as we move and sway through each day, accomplishing life’s tasks in a different way.

As we try to hang on to what was, we are reaching for what can be as we travel this new path – a path that extends ahead into a fog that blocks our vision of our future. We are desperately holding on to each other… until death do us part. We are holding hands and stepping forth in faith that God will continue to hold us firmly so we won’t stumble. We are holding hands just like we do when we joyfully cross the parking lot on our breakfast date.

Beauty on a Sunday

/ Pat / 1 Comment

On my visit to the Naples Botanical Garden this week, I spent a lot of time in the Orchid Garden. It wasn’t my goal but when I arrived I remembered that last weekend was the orchid show and sale so I knew they would have some of their special orchids on display.

I love the challenge of taking photos of orchids because background is almost always a problem whether they are staged in the orchid garden or hanging from trees throughout the rest of the garden. When I saw this one I knew I had a winner and after moving a bit to the left I had the framing I desired. I did a little cropping, and some lightening/brightening because the orchid was in shade.

I love it when a photo turns out the way I envisioned it – it makes up for all the photos that don’t, ending up in the deleted photo pile.

I would like to know what kind of beauty sustains you on this Sunday. If you do a post, please send me a link.