Photography Practice

It’s windy, so shooting outside isn’t an option for the kind of photography I’m hungry for. Fortunately, there’s a pretty bunch of pink alstroemerias on the dining table that will do nicely. In the past, when I shoot indoors, I’ve liked to work in the woman cave using the natural light from the big north-facing window. That space has been taken over by watercolour paint paraphernalia, so I decide to work upstairs near the west-facing window instead.

I pull out my camera and check the battery, attach my 60mm macro lens, riffle through my bag for the remote timer, grab my tripod and head upstairs.

I’m rusty, there’s no doubt. But I fall into the peace of playing with aperture, shutter speed, and ISO while composing and shooting again and again. I work in silence, as I usually do, and aside from Murphy underfoot and demanding to know what I’m doing, the quiet, meditative time is like balm.

I see something I would never have noticed if I wasn’t focusing on the smallest parts of the flowers: the tiniest water droplet on one of the stamens. I switch my lens to manual focus and capture some images, run downstairs for my extension tubes and capture a few more. It’s magical, this tiny droplet.

When I’m satisfied that I have enough to work with, I take the card out of my camera and head down to the woman cave to play in Lightroom and Topaz Studio. I love post processing almost as much as taking photos.

As is sometimes the case and after such a long time away, expected, I don’t have much I can work with. As I said, I’m rusty. But I dabble with sliders and crop a couple images and it’s still time we’ll spent.

Later, the wind dies down for a pocket of time and I take my camera out to the deck to photograph flowers in pots. I’m captivated by the geraniums and, there, in the hidden places I would pay little mind to on an ordinary day, I find something that looks like magic.

And I remember why I love the style of flower photography I like to shoot. It shows me things I would otherwise miss, and in these things, I see the hand of the Creator and my faith deepens. For me, this kind of photography is prayer sure as anything.

So yes, I’m rusty.

But after a long, parched time, I’m ready to resume practice.

(The image accompanying this post is one I took of the geraniums on my back deck. I see many things I wish I had done differently, but I also see something of the Divine.)