A Closer Look

Tiny Snow Stars, my front yard.

Frost Face, my front yard. (can you see him?)

     This week I decided to play around with the Macro setting on my camera.  I specifically bought a digital camera that had zoom and Macro capabilities.  Granted, it's not a super expensive camera, but I figured it was a good place to start.  I have no previous experience using a macro, and the extent of my knowledge is pretty much, I can get really close up to my subject.  The main reason I wanted a camera with macro capabilities is because I love to look past the whole of an object and just see the parts.  Too often we take for granted all the amazing things we see and our brain processes our sight so quickly we don't often take note of the tiny details that give our world its rich splendor.

Lichen what you see?  my front yard.

One of my favorite homework assignments I give my students is to go home and look at the grass in their yard.  I have them get down and really look.  When they come in the next day we discuss how many different colors they saw.  Depending on the time of year, I get answers like brown for dirt, tan for dead grass, green for healthy grass, grey for a stick, orange/red/yellow/brown for a leaf, purple/blue/yellow for flowers.  It is amazing how something so simple opens their eyes to the colors of the world around them, and causes them to seek out what makes those colors, and really appreciate the details of their world.  My obsession extends beyond the grass and goes right up the tree trunk.  I LOVE tree bark.  I love looking at it, touching it, photographing it.  The texture and patterns, colors and contrast, it is a feast for my eyes, and excites my creative spirit.  

Valley or Crevasse? my front yard.

This morning when I awoke, there was a dusting of snow on the lawn and it was still blowing a bit in the air.  I grabbed my camera and decided to try and get some close up photos of the snow clinging to the tree bark.  Usually I just put my camera on the automatic setting, click on the macro option and go, but today I tried to take pictures using a variety of settings.  One thing I love about my camera is it lets me be lazy.  I don't have to take notes about my settings, I can go back and look them up... as long as I don't accidentally delete them.  My struggles today were getting the camera to focus on the snow particles and not the bark.  I also played with different angles and shaded some of the ambient light with my hands, to keep the snow from being just white, and diminishing the details.  I certainly need more practice at this but it was fun to play around with it.  I even got a couple optical illusion shots where it like you looking down into a rock valley inhabited by a ponderous glacier (oh come on, use your imagination!!).  Take a look at them and tell me what you think!

The Last Pass, my front yard.