Monday Miscellany: A Day Late But Not Too Short

My posting has been light lately. This is not for any lack of postable material, but for a real lack of time and energy to complete the task. There are so many things to say and so few alert brain cells to compose them. Here are a few.

I recently had a birthday. It brought to mind the best gift my wife has ever given me for my birthday: my HP Photosmart R707 Digital Camera.

When I was younger and much less wise, I had delusions of becoming a writer. I thought I could be the next Tolkien. If not that, maybe the next C.S. Lewis. Well, I would settle for becoming the next George MacDonald. If I had to, I would become the next Stephen Lawhead. Surely, I could write better than Lawhead. My dreams never quite worked out the way I wanted them to. To become a "writer" one has to, well, write. To become an "author" on has to write well (can one "auth"?). I had neither the discipline to write consistently nor the gift to write well (as readers of this blog can well attest).

My wife's gift of a digital camera was a stroke of genius. My wife is a bit of a genius anyway with two possible exceptions: choice of husband and giving of gifts. My wife tends to either reveal the gift to me way too soon, use the gift more herself than I do, or get me something so obvious that I guess what it is just by looking at the expression on her face. She has gotten me some fine gifts in the past, but, in her words, "I never know what to get you." The camera was brilliant. Yes, I gave her a harsh glance for spending so much money on something, but it has become one of my favorite possessions and an outlet for my spirit of creativity past.

In the past year I (mostly I, some by my wife) have taken over 2,400 photographs. Sure the bulk of the photos are deletable, but we haven't had to pay to have any of those professionally processed. I have found that I have to take 10-20 pictures to get one good one. I have to take at least a hundred to get one that I am truly happy with. Sure, digital photography is easy, but creating an image that I find attractive has been a great joy for me in a trying year. Now I feel that I am ready to move up to a "real" camera. As soon as I win $700.00 in the lottery, I am getting this.

I know I am no artist, but here are some of my favorite photos from the last year. I cannot share all of my favorites with you as many of them reveal more of the faces of my children than I am willing to share publicly on the Internet. I will be happy to e-mail information to any friends and family who want to see my "private" photos on my flickr account.

The captions for each photo are above the photo being described.

This is one of the first pictures I took that I really liked. There is a lovely patch of daylilies that bloom quite vigorously each spring. This one waited until the fall. It was as though it was waiting for me to get my camera. I must have take thirty to forty pictures of this one flower. I caught this one the first time I experimented with black and white. It was a beautiful, late autumn afternoon. I love the creamy quality of the pedals against the stone.



This is my "most viewed" photo on my flickr account. It has been viewed 34 times (that means someone saw it and thought enough of it to click on it to get a closer view). Two people have even been kind enough to "favorite" it. I took the photo early this spring when the maple behind my house produces approximately 17 billion of these little beauties. All of them land in my gutters. This is not one of my favorite photos, but I feel I owe it to the 34 people who have made it my most popular photo. By comparison, real photos by real photographers on flickr get thousands of views.


This is my second most popular photo on flickr. It also has 34 views, but no favorites. It looks like my son is being very solemn and patriotic before this veterans' memorial at Veterans' State Park; in truth, he was looking at the water fall.



This is one of my favorite photos of my boy. He was wearying from his first day of fishing and was wishing he could be a rider in the boat in the distance.


This is my favorite "accident". I was trying to get a good photo of this mystery flower (read about it here). I like trying to take "macros" (photos of small things, or extreme closeups) and I saw my girl come into the picture. I said her name disapprovingly, but it was too late to stop my finger from clicking the button. You can see her looking over her shoulder at me as though to say, "What did I do?" She is quite lovely. The flower came out pretty good too.


This is one of my favorites. It was early spring, and I had been trying to take pictures of dandelions for a week. I had gotten a couple of decent ones when I went out at sunset one day and saw this one standing all alone and proud. I have not changed any of the coloration on this photo. I like the bare trees against the sky as frames around the dandelion illuminated by the sunset.


Thanks for the gift my love. If any of you want to see more, please feel free to go to my flickr site. Almost all of the pictures look better big. If you want me stop slowing down your computer with silly pictures, feel free to comment.

Peace