In the Flower of My Youth — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/320
The flower’s life moves with speed. Governed by uncontrollable forces from dust to dust it will rise, flourish, and whither. Rejoining to the earth bearing the wear of a life well lived. Brief as that life may be. At its height a culmination of beauty, strength, and vigor owns the spotlight magnifying the magnificence of life. Anchored by our frame of reference onlookers glimpse life for what it will be, is, or once was.
Ruminating upon my own flower this reality has come into particular, and ofttimes uncomfortable focus. Viewed against a litany of health problems experienced over the past 13 months I face the age of 35 at month’s end. Throwing into high gear the acuteness of transition from is to what once was. My youth is fallen from me. Torn from my fingers without even a moment to slip. Like all transitions change augurs uncomfortable truths. Yet facing the truth brings the necessary knowledge for the next step—the next triumph. Honor what once was and embrace what wisdom awaits.
I’d be lying if I said the hosta plant was high on my list of favorite flowers before getting behind the lens. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I ever took much note of them at all. Here again photography proves a great teacher, turning attention to where before there was none. More precise, it was this time a year ago I first fixed focus on a hosta with my macro lens. In a frame not dissimilar to what I share today, a hosta bloom unfurls with a kindness into a delicate array of petals bathed in pastel tones. Layers peel away and lend depth to provide a softness and intimacy that passed heretofore unnoticed. Unnoticed at least to my once uncultivated eye.
Hobbies are great. Hobbies that teach us, humble us, surprise us are even better. It’s one thing to find something you’re good at and helps while away the hours. It’s a whole other thing to find something that challenges you in unforeseen ways and breaks the well worn foundations which bind us to our ways.
Picked by You — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/400
Oh beloved flower macro forever I hold dear. Time and again I’ve written about macro’s special place in my photographic journey. Were it not for my 100mm lens during 2012’s daily photo project I’m most positive I wouldn’t be the landscape photographer you know today. In truth, I wouldn’t be any kind of photographer today.
Specific credit must go to flowers. A legacy of my home’s previous owners—my parents—is an array of perennials the liven up the property from April through October. Cutting my teeth in 2012, flowers, beautiful and without judgment offered an approachable muse for this shy shooter. Allowed to hone my posture, technique, and stillness I took to handheld macro shooting with some dexterity. Learning to depress the shutter between breathes as becoming an able marksman.
From there I built upon composition principles. Applying the rule of thirds, maintaining balance and symmetry in my frames. It was during this nascent stage my eyes opened to the mechanics of bokeh and depth of field. Once oblivious I had no idea lenses produced areas of non-focus in such an appealing manner. Taken by this effect with earnest, I’ve been an advocate of open apertures for my entire body of non landscape work ever since. I even made a connection to my adolescence as a struggling painter. In all my works I tried to paint all aspects of the composition with perfect rigid detail. Had I eased and let non essential portions blur focus I would have brought more attention to the subjects that mattered. This is vital in portraiture or a still life that features a key subject—akin to the flower above. It’s remarkable to learn your lesson over a decade later from little expected places.
To come full circle I made this photograph at my parents’ new house. Ensconced yet again by a rich array of perennials. Here it was a breed of Black-eyed Susans that called to my camera and me. You may recall I published one photograph already from the batch of photographs I made last Sunday. I was glad to dust off my 100mm macro lens to revisit from whence I came.
Editor’s note: Shout-out to everyone on Instagram and Snapchat who came to my aid. You helped me decided between color and black and white for this photograph. This title is a hat-tip to you. More news: I published a column for Breaker Zine’s debut Beta Issue and my article is now online. If you enjoy reading about how I got started with photography be sure to check it out. Thanks!
You know the grind. You feel it. It weighs heavy as you mire through life’s ebbs and flows. You cherish the highs and bury the lows. It’s in the space between you grind for purpose. Two steps forward. Two steps back. Captured in inescapable reality, caught in the throes of a fated cosmic dance.
You adorn your triumph and bury your loss. Unobserved to others the loss is still as real. No less massive, no less an equal equal force in the intwined gravitational balance. Only buried, left to rot and consume. Of course this is life. An impartial duality to remind you of inherent vitality sprinkled with uncertainty. The fearsome dive to the depths releases you to relish the inevitable rise to new heights. Actions need balance. Yet the weight of it all will pull you back to the grind. Working. Churning. Struggling. Steadfast to best understand what it all means. You’re tired. It is in these moments where you are best to open up; to show your full self warts and all. Let the world see you as you are, adorned with hope, fear, and the grinding middle ground we all feel.
May 2017 brought the rain. With it came puddles of mud and big blooms of flowers. Currently on display are the peonies. I have four peony plants about my front and back yards, each a slight variation of the species. I’m no botanist and cannot label the differences. Two of the peonies are of the pom-pom variety. Bulbous fluffy flower petals with plenty of fluff. The two others are more sparse of petal and unfurl to reveal a large bundle of pollen rich yellow stamen. The pink version is the one you see above. Its purple counterpart will not be in bloom this year thanks to an overgrown spirea.
My brain gets the best of me. Often I wrap myself sideways in details that stand meaningless to most. Mired in Minutia: A Greg Molyneux Memoir. Case in point, I present this photograph. I’ve been scrutinizing Google images for days, sweating over proper bee identification. Is it a bumblebee? A carpenter bee? A rusty patched bumblebee? Which until yesterday I knew nothing about; bombus affinis is one cool species name, though. Or is it some other bee I don’t even know about? Ah yes, the endless fretting of a runaway mind.
Taxed and unable to commit I sent a photo of my photo to Ben Wurst today. South Jersey’s Captain Planet, Ben’s the clear choice for local wildlife identification. Almost immediately Ben confirmed my suspicion. Declaring this here bee of the carpenter kind. Whew! Are you tired from this tedium, too?
Speak softly and carry a macro lens. And that’s enough Teddy Roosevelt for this post. Besides, I’m quite a loud talker. Despite being sans computer for the better part of the past month I was still out in my yard making photos. I’m sure my Mid-Atlantic flower peeps noticed the stellar wisteria bloom that manifest this spring. It was something else. When these little beauties go they create one of my favorite flowering spectacles. Tentacles of blossoms unfurl with columns of flowers serving as would be suction cups upon chlorophyll tentacles.
Centered in my backyard sits a small wisteria. It annoys me to know end come late spring; stretching without mercy to attach itself to most anything. These bad boys grow at an alarming rate. The only way to greet it is head on—trimming shears in hand—and on a regular basis. But during the years they bloom en masse, all the invasive conquest that comes later is worth it.
As for the photograph above we’ve got a few things working here. Some good and some accidental. The good? The light play. Rich afternoon light set up ideal conditions to capture the petite blossoms. The accidental? I was shooting handheld with my 100mm lens and not paying enough attention I dropped a 1/80 second exposure. As a general rule I like my exposure to be greater than or equal to the focal length of the lens. In this case an exposure greater than (re: faster than) or equal to 1/100 second. Holding to this formula helps keep your handheld shots sharp. Yet in this case the accidental soft focus builds on the photo. It drops a layer of whimsy onto the frame; a warm glow calming the soul. Sometimes our mistakes work in our favor.
Is #caturday still a thing? The hashtag phenomenon calling all cat people to all things cars on Saturday—you know a caturday? My yard calls to suburban furry creatures as an animated thicket beckons would be Disney characters to newborn prince. Ample cover, low level shrubs, plants, and flowers provide optimal feeding grounds for all kinds of neighborhood fauna. Birds, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, possum, and cats make themselves at home on the stomping grounds of my modest lot. Cats especially. Their hunting and lounging must be ideal as they loiter around my house daily. Having zero pets indoors, aside from some unwanted house spiders , it’s nice to see lively bustling about my lawn.
I’m pretty sure the orange tabby cat photographed above belongs to one of my neighbors—he/she is in possession of a collar—but whose exactly? I am not sure. This guy likes to flop at the end of my driveway, butted up against the house close to where the chipmunks nest, only to leave as soon as I pull in to the drive and pop out the car. I’ll get a skeptical glance at the business end of about two seconds of serious eye contact as the cat scoots off on its way. A few weeks back while photographing some sedum, I found the cat brooding underneath a bush on the edge of my property. Mr. Cat unexpectedly decided to stay put allowing me to lay on the ground to make a few photographs featuring its nonplussed feline visage. This photograph reveals nicely the seriousness in its eyes—a driving uncertainty of mistrust dominating an urge to open up. The paw reaching forward further explains the narrative of this dichotomy. So Mr. Cat, while you are not mine you are more than welcome to my yard any time. (Not that you cared for my permission to begin with.)
In taking a top-down approach we can process the world around us differently. This may be one of the most basic photographs I have posted to this site, and yet I find it endlessly captivating. It has a real watchability if you’ll allow me to use words that read like they don’t belong in a dictionary. Seriously, I fully anticipated the red-dotted line to appear under watchability—I would have lost any and all bets on that being a word. Anyway. I find myself mesmerized as I look down and into this image, losing myself for minutes at a time. Its tight reticulated pattern reminds of an autostereogram—those mind-melding 2-D images that are supposed to reveal a 3-D scene within its otherwise non-specific pattern. These drove me nuts as a kid. I can remember numerous class trips to several museums where we’d inevitably find ourselves in the obligatory gift shop where we’d one-by-one try our hand at discerning the image. My friends would undoubtedly make it work within a few minutes, and there’d I sit, dejected and unable to make out any kind of scene. My brain couldn’t get past the replicant TV snow presented in technicolor splatter. It always bummed me out as I feared my eyes and brain were somehow broken—somehow a failure of intelligent design. While I still can’t find any kind of image waiting to burst forth from this photograph, nor do I think there’s anything specific hiding in there, it sure is fun to look upon. Far less stressful than classmates bleating out, “there’s the horse! Can you see it, Greg? It’s right there!”
