Tag Archives: flower

I couldn’t help myself

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Having published eight images of butterflies in the last couple of days it was time to give them a rest.  Time to move on to other subjects.
Weeds make fine images, lots of texture and even a little drama.  Flowers are good too.

But despite hundreds of acres of foliage, water, birds, etc. at Fort Harrison State Park, I went right back to the butterflies.


They just kept coming.

You may not be able to count them all, but there are nine butterflies in this image:

I suppose I could have called some friends and asked them to talk me out of it but they would have wanted to come along too.

My name is Barry.  I photograph butterflies.

More butterflies

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Here are some more butterflies from Fort Harrison State Park yesterday.






Later this morning I’ll go see if the butterflies are still there.  That will be part of the trip, but it is time to look for something new as well.  But I’ll still check out the butterflies.

Meanwhile, back at the Indianapolis Art Center

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Our camera club meets at the Indianapolis Art Center every week.  I often go early with my camera looking for opportunities.  I had shot flowers on this plant two weeks in a row and I was over there again this morning to shoot this flower.  I have come back to this plant four times.


This is a rather small flower, probably less than an inch from the tip of one petal to that of another and it was under a rather large leaf.  But there it was and I kept coming back.  I can’t identify the plant, it is probably exotic, perhaps from Africa or Asia.  Here is the leaf in case you can help identify it – it is about a foot long.


Interesting how one flower can capture us and bring us back repeatedly.  Fortunately it stays fresh for several days.

It was breezy this morning and elsewhere on the grounds of the Art Center these large leaves were waving in the breeze.  I don’t know what plant this is either, the leaves were about three feet long.

That is a new leaf unfurling in front of a mature leaf.  Shooting up close with the the wind blowing the leaves around made for a crap shoot as far as any given image was concerned but with a digital camera and a large CF card, I could take several pictures.  I hate to think of shooting with film under these conditions, one or two shots would have had to suffice; film is expensive.

Here is the mature leaf by itself:


And the new leaf alone:

Worth waiting for.

It was a good morning and I went home satisfied that I had more than I expected to get.  But I will still go back again for that special flower:


One small technical note: both flower shots are actually comprised of three images each shot at different exposures.  They were assembled with the High Dynamic Range tools in Photoshop CS5.  That software is doing its job.

A simple spirituality: Part 4

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Spirit and seeing, spirituality and photography.  I believe that each nourishes the other.  Right, but how does that work?  How do they fit together and nourish one another?

This is one of those things I know to be true but it is mysterious and I find it difficult to put into words.  I’ll begin by repeating what I have written before about the nature of spirituality.  Here’s the working definition:

‘the pattern of beliefs, attitudes and feelings about the Sacred and the world – a pattern that defines who you are at the profoundest level.’ (From Skylight Paths, Who Is My God?: An Innovative Guide to Finding Your Spiritual Identity, Skylight Paths Publishing; March 2004, p5)

This is essentially the definition of personality with the addition that the Sacred is placed at the center.  Viewed most broadly, an individual’s spirituality is always a part of what that individual thinks or does.  It doesn’t have to be a thought or an act with spirituality actively in mind, it is there whether we recognize it or not.  In an important way then, our spirituality as well as our personality colors and frames the way we think and behave.  Of course there are times when we don’t act according to our best spiritual selves.  The apostle Paul made this point when he wrote

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Romans 7: 14-15

I would be surprised if all major religions did not share this lament.  So we don’t always act according to who we are at the profoundest level.

In my simple spirituality, everything is interconnected.  God is in all, all is in God.  So when I go out to shoot, there is a strong sense of wonder at God’s creation.  Looking through the viewfinder of a camera intensifies that sense of wonder.  I see this most strongly with close up, or macro, photography.

Getting close to a flower opens up a new world.  Flowers are small, and if we think of the distance between our eye and the bloom in terms of diameters of the bloom (e.g. this flower is half an inch across) we are almost always at least 10 diameters away and more often, when we are walking past them, perhaps hundreds of diameters away.  So when we are close we see a lot more of what the flower is about.  And there is more to it.  We aren’t just close, we are looking at it through the viewfinder which considerably restricts our field of view.  If we are close enough, we see just the flower and little, or nothing, else.   A sense of wonder is then all but inevitable.

But the sense of wonder is not restricted to just flowers.  A flower just provides one good example.  Looking closely at a flower readily gives rise to wonder in just about anyone.  Most things we see, hear, feel or otherwise sense can be a source of wonder.  The quote from Meister Eckhart in the banner at the top of this page says it very well:

This then, is salvation: to marvel at the beauty of created things and to marvel at the beauty of their Creator

What feeds wonder in me probably wouldn’t be the same as it would be for you.  That’s why we could stand next to one another with cameras and come back with different portfolios.

I believe that sense of wonder is an expression of spirituality.  It is God in me seeking God in the world.  So is it surprising that spirituality would nourish photography?  Or that photography nourishes spirituality?  I’ll write more on this soon.

Halloween gift

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We have iris growing next to the house and we hadn’t gotten around to cutting them back.  Yesterday my wife noticed one with buds.  It was going down into the 30s last night so she cut it and brought it inside.Iris_8305_4

It bloomed during the night and I photographed it in late afternoon sun today.

This, my wife tells me, is a ‘rebloomer.’  It blooms early and then it blooms late.  The squirrels, chipmunks, trees of various persuasion, grass, weeds, most kinds of flowers, are all settling down to winter – gathering food, shedding leaves, bringing sap back to the roots and in general going to sleep.  But this flower is blooming.  That’s extravagantly beautiful isn’t it?

Some believe that the origins of Zen Buddhism lie in what has come to be known as ‘the flower sermon.’  The Buddha held up a white flower before his disciples and said nothing.  The ‘suchness’ of the flower, the way it was at that moment, was the point, saying anything about it would have added nothing.  We need say nothing more about this iris.