Back in the day, I dabbled in photography.
By which I mean that I did black and whites and could do my own processing. I rarely did the usual holiday snaps of people with their arms around each other in front of something – I was far more into still lifes, places, and occasionally portraits. I still have a developing canister and a few other bits of hardware, though I’m sure all the paper expired years ago, and I haven’t got access to a darkroom.
It turned out that, once I didn’t have access to a darkroom, developing film got to be a bit more expensive than I could afford for a tertiary hobby. At the same time, digital cameras had come out, but good ones were well beyond my means as well, so I pretty much stopped taking photos.
But then I started bringing lunch to work.
About three years ago, two things happened about the same time. First, I got a decent digital camera (a Kodak 8MP miniDSLR with optical zoom). Second, I started making boxed lunches for work and documenting them for my own amusement. Instantly, I was back to fussing with angles and lighting. I kept an eye out for a tripod at the thrift store until I found one for ten bucks.
My photos of a trip to Carlsbad Caverns were about 90% rocks and vistas, and only 10% the rest of the people with me. On a trip to Philadelphia and England, I took an absolutely insane number of photos at the Philadelphia Museum of Art – not just of the art itself, but of the plaques – and even more in England, at the Tower, the College of Arms, a 12th C church, and my favorite non-existent historical location, 221B Baker Street.
What I discovered, when I looked at the museum photos later, was that the camera could see better than I could.
I’ve been wearing glasses for about twenty years now. Once I went without new glasses for so long that I forgot that objects could have sharp edges. The day I got that next pair of glasses, I wanted to shake people and point at the corners of tables and scream at them about the awesomeness of clarity in vision. That night I went out in the desert and cried because I could see the Milky Way again. I had forgotten the stars.
So you can see (ahem) why I might have been a bit excited when I discovered the potential for the camera to act as a magnifying glass that records.
I’m fascinated with macro photography … plants, flowers, textures, the patterns of light.
You can see why … I mean, did you know that foxglove flowers have little hair-like bits?
Did you know that many medieval painted portraits show ultra-fine details such as seams? They do. (I just can’t show those photos here, since museums tend to get sticky about that kind of thing.)
The usual thing would be to set up a web gallery or post to A Popular Social Network or That Popular Photo Sharing Site and let all my friends ogle them to their hearts’ content. That’s not how I roll, though; I put them up on Zazzle instead as Ninth Circle Photography.
Expect to see more photos here though, along with more chatter about photography.
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