I made the most of strong midday sun and an anxious butterfly battling for a sip. While I may have contributed to this silver-spotted skipper’s general unease, to be sure it was a dive bombing carpenter bee who proved the true villain. Selfish to the last this boring bee, not content with undermining wooden structures, also suffers from an insatiable need to dominate the local plant life as well. Unprovoked harassment aside, the skittish butterfly proved tenacious and drank surreptitiously upon a purple coneflower nectar in fits and starts.
As the drama unfold I remained the steadfast dispassionate observer. Channeling my best, albeit deficient, Sir David Attenborough, I permitted nature’s battle unmolested. Instead of meddling in the travails of bugs I sat back with my 100mm macro lens and popped off exposures. I worked close and fast relying on handheld work to make my frames.
Five minutes feel about 20 when you’re front and center with nature. Time dilation further magnifies when viewed in macro. Tunneling focus sets in as your whole world collapses down to lens physics making large of the small. It’s as if descending into an enlarged world of minutia brings with it a slower perception of time, reinforcing its relative nature. It is not without other lessons. The speed of the big world evaporates. The worry over text messages, tweet storms, and emails that need answering two minutes before receipt fades in full. It’s as if nature is trying to tell those who will see what does indeed matter.
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