From a distance, the middle of winter can seem unsightly. Brown, gray, wilted, withered and downright dead.
But get up close enough, and winter looks deceptively glamorous.
The vertical glamour shot:
The glamour head shot:
The cheesecake/beefcake shot:
The ubiquitous close-up shot:
And the perfect boudoir shot:
MUST BE 18 TO ENTER:
“You’re in Radiator Springs, the cutest little town in Carburetor County.” — Mater
The Denver Botanic Gardens is a local destination. It’s almost in my front yard. I’ve visited before. But not like today.
Today I tried to focus on something different. Focus itself.
Focused attention? No. I was totally paying attention. I was in the moment, to be sure.
I was trying to focus my camera on nature…all at once: photographic composition, proper exposure and technical execution, exquisite light quality, artistic expression, contrast of color, texture, and emotion, etc.
Well, that’s nuts.
Nature doesn’t work that way. Nature happens in moments. Sometimes the moments happen in color, or not. Sometimes nature’s moments are a contrast in light or texture. Sometimes nature is not at all artstic. At other times, nature’s moments are elusive or ambiguous. And sometimes, the best of nature’s moments are unfocused.
Stop squinting.
When is it each year that we relinquish the carefree days of summer?
When do we trade the universal perfume of freshly mown grass for the unmistakable scent of raked leaves?
Is there a specific moment when we no longer notice the smells of swimming pools and wet towels, but embrace the aroma of crackling fireplaces and baking pies?
Does autumn officially arrive only once we have donned our first sweatshirt, noted the earlier hour of twilight each day, or witnessed the first golden leaves of change on the trees?
Is there a specific moment in time when we are no longer aware of the rhythmic clacking of skateboards traveling past the house or admit to missing the hollow echos of nearby bouncing balls and the exuberant, joyful laugher of children?
Is autumn’s arrival evident only once we recognize a new quiet; a quiet hauntingly void of the sounds of chirping crickets and singing birds?
Do we hear autumn’s arrival in the thunderous sound of crowds cheering favored football teams to victory in the chill of the evening air?
Is this when autumn has truly arrived?
I believe autumn arrives the moment we notice.
Today, during my tedious and seemingly endless commute to work, I inadvertently – I mean deliberately and safe-driver defensively – checked my rearview mirror while coming to a (complete)stop for a red light just to make sure I was not going to be rear ended, when I noticed the strangest thing about the car behind me. The car was an older model, rusty, something-or-other with a bad paint job and a broken mirror. Not that remarkable, you say? Well, perhaps not…on a normal day. This however seemed not to be a normal day.
I have been commuting to work now for over oh, let’s just say somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple deca…er…years, and have never seen anything comparable. And I have seen some strange things during rush hour: women putting on their makeup, drying their hair, and brushing and/or styling their hair; men shaving, women shaving; people reading newspapers or magazines behind the wheel (God’s honest truth); kids steering, passengers steering, and no one steering; people yawning, people laughing, people singing, and people in a trance; people showing off their manicures, their jewelry, their specific fingers and their true colors. But today, I saw, in the car behind me…..hate-to-miss-breakfast-guy eating an entire corn on the cob, buttered, with both hands. For reals. Both hands off the steering wheel; one hand on the left side of the cob, one on the right side of the cob…looking as satisfied and fulfilled as if he had just eaten a delectable 5-star-restaurant quality entree. Mmmm. Mmmm. Good.
So what does hate-to-miss-breakfast guy have to do with my DISTRACTIONS post, you ask? Well, nothing really. I just wanted to report my observation from this morning and relate it to the following photographs that I have taken in the past. These photographs all have a distraction in common: what I was trying to shoot and what I ended up shooting. Can you tell the difference?
Walking up close to the bottom of something and looking straight up can produce some interesting results.
As EYE See... 