I decided to give my Leica 2 its own flower show today; it’s a miracle to have three very different cameras for me to use on my flowers; I’m learning a lot about all three.

Each one – the Leica Monochrome, the Leica 2, the Iphone 13 – is different and does different things. The flowers are giving me a graduate degree in photography.

I don’t need an agent, and I don’t need a gallery, and I don’t need the eye-rolling and clucking harrumphs of the old guard.

I’ve always been someone who makes other people uncomfortable and unknowingly and knowingly challenges conventional wisdom. It’s just the way it is.

It isn’t intentional, but I can’t deny it either. The flowers have become vital to me, and they have become essential to other people.

I know I’m not supposed to be someone who knows about flowers and can take lovely photos of them. Life is luck that I take it when it gives me a shot.

But here we are. I love it, and the yentas and peckerheads are confused and momentarily silent. They will, I know, return.

People keep suggesting I join various groups, and that’s nice, but I am just not a joiner. It’s not in my blood or DNA. Do your favorite groups a favor, and keep me out of them.

Any gathering of more than three people is doomed to become ineffectual, hateful, or boring. That’s the poison of politics. Along, men and women can do great things. In a group, that’s often – not always – impossible.

I need to figure things out for myself and ask for help – and pay for it – when I need it. Being alone is where I belong; that’s the way life works.

The Leica 2 did not disappoint. As always, understanding the light, inside and out of the camera, is everything. This morning, the hot sun was good. The Leica 2 just drank it up.

I want to put up these flower photos before we head to Williamstown, Mass., to see Jordan Peele’s new movie, Nope. It sounds wild; I’m not usually interested in horror movies, but Peele has made the genre his own, and I’m very eager to see what he’s done with this film. It’s getting enormous amounts of buzz.

I’ll review it if I have something to offer – reviewing a Peele movie will stretch the outer boundaries of my confidence and skill.

It’s too hot to do much of anything else; a great day for a movie and some Japanese or Thai food.

Here is Leica’s interpretation of flowers; I hope you enjoy it. I keep thinking I’ll get tired of taking the same photos every day, but the truth is they are not the same; I’m excited every day.

I trust the Leica 2 with color if the light is right. If it isn’t, that’s another story. This camera is moody and arrogant; it does what it wants. But when it delivers, it delivers.

Going inside these flowers is among the most beautiful experiences of my life. There is so much color and feeling and emotion in there; it takes me to a new and different place and leaves me feeling calm and content.

 

I didn’t see the light shining through the heart of this gladiola when I took the photo, but the camera spotted it immediately.

This orange gladiola photo is different from all the others. It was out of the direct sunlight, and it looked to me as if a hand was coming out of its interior.

 

I could look at this gladiola for an hour; it is a meditation all unto itself.

 

The right light brings out all sorts of invisible things in these flower pictures, all kinds of things I can’t see because the sunlight is too.

 

I am grateful to have lived long enough to have a camera that can take photos like this and a Leica2 and a Leica Monochrome. Both have changed my life and made me think of myself as an artist, something I have wanted all my life.

A writer is a terrific thing to be, but a writer is not an artist to me. An artist is something entirely different in my mind.  Something to do with color and light and the shape of things.

I think I can be both, which is a great accomplishment in my life, second only to convincing Maria to marry me.

Thanks for watching the movie.