May 9, 2008 – I was not much interested in flowers, until I started taking photos. To tell you the truth, I am still not much into flowers, but I am into taking photos of them. I don’t really even know what kind of flower this is. It was in a planter on my porch, and Annie put it and some other flowers there this week, as she does every Spring. I water them, but that’s about it.
  I am not a gardener, not into gardening, and I can’t remember the names of flowers anymore than I can remember the names of birds. When I take a long lens – in this case a a 180 mm with extender tubes – out into the woods or onto the porch, and I look through it, I see an imagined world, a little universe of creation, and a quite lovely, even enchanting one. It’s been suggested to me that God is whispering to me through these photos, and that may be true, because I certainly never imagined these worlds before, or thought much about them.
  As a photographer, what I see is a self-contained kingdom, with all sorts of movement, personality and drama. My goal is to capture this in a picture, and I usually fail at it. Once in awhile, I look through the lens, and I say, without even realizing it, “oh!” and I hit the shutter. When I get to the computer and download the shot, I am often amazed by what I see, and my mind races with all sorts of scenarios and happenings.
  You can almost literally see creation in this photo, and it leaves me almost breathless sometimes, and what a beautiful feeling that is – a creation within a creation. Blows your mind, really. And right on my porch.