Smell All the Flowers...

One of the problems with photographing flowers is that it is so easy to get caught up in their sheer beauty through the viewfinder that it is easy to totally miss or ignore their other great attributes.

And one of these is the multitude of wonderful smells and fragrances you experience while "nose to blossom" when taking closeups like this one.

And it was this realization the other day that led me to re-think the old expression about "Taking time to smell the Roses".

In fact we should take time to smell all the flowers and experiences life presents us with.  Often it is easy to get caught up in one aspect of something and miss a lot of what life is just begging us to experience.

So the next time you start to focus in what you think is that single most important aspect of something take a step back... take a deep breath and enjoy the rest of what life has to offer!  :-)

"Floating Leaf" - Centre County, PA

Floating Leaf - Centre County, PA

This is another one of my favorites from my "Black & White Period".  At the time I was heavily involved in trying to teach myself the "Zone System" (a system of determining exposure and film development) practiced and perfected by Ansel Adams. 

On late-fall a walk through the woods looking for subjects that would lend themselves well to experimenting with these techniques... I saw this leaf floating on the surface of a slow moving stream. 

I was attracted to the various textures and the range of tones... from a few near white grains of sand here and there to the deep blacks along the corners... all forming a frame for the remains of this decaying leaf.

Shot with a Nikon F2 with 55/3.5 Micro-Nikkor on Tri-x film.

"Mirror Image in Sand" - Starfish, St. Augustine, FL

Another image from early in my career as a photographer and a perfect example of what I've always said... "Some of your best photos will always be the result of complete accidents, dumb luck... or both".

Mirror Image in Sand - St. Augustine, FL.

This was shot made during a family vacation to St. Augustine, Florida.  I was about 18 at the time and our family had been staying at the Kon Tiki campground outside St. Augustine.

We'd been collecting shells and other treasures from the sea at the beach one day and set them all aside on the picnic table to dry out.

The next morning as we were packing up for the return trip home to Pennsylvania... I picked up this starfish and was delightfully surprised to see this image magically materialize right before my eyes.

I immediately grabbed my camera (which I think was a Yashica TL Electro-X the time) from the car and started shooting away.  It had a relatively decent quality Soligor zoom lens on it with a macro capability that I didn't use much due to the challenge of holding it steady enough to get good results.  But In this case I got lucky and was able to hand hold it well enough to capture this image on Kodak Plus-X film.  

As an aside I think this also might have been the first time I really had to make a photo under the pressure of a "deadline".  As I recall the family car with pop-up camper attached was pulling out of the campsite as I was shooting :-)