Impending spring

Actually, spring is already here. It's visible in so many ways. The house across the street has hyacinths and daffodils greening up. They will bloom before long.

Yesterday I changed the backgrounds on my desktop and my laptop. I was looking for photos of trees whose buds were about to open. It's very hard to find such a photo. I found one for my desktop but it is not the right size to cover the whole background. Maybe I should try one of those stock photo sites. Sometimes I do well just finding a photo a person took, posted online, and it's free to use. But I guess I did not look well enough.

Usually I just pick a photo that has tulips blooming and green grass and use it until summer really starts. But not this year. I wanted something that looked more like the early part of the spring. There is something definitely to see there.

The canopy of tree limbs over a road which are just about to bloom would be a wonderful photo to see. Unfortunately, not many of those photos must be taken. Photographers probably wait until just a bill later when there are actual leaves. But then they miss something. They miss the becoming part. It's interesting to see how living things become what they are.

It's too bad I never got to be the photographer I wanted to be. I know I see many things with a photographer's eye. When I figured out how to set up a potential photo in the camera's frame, I learned something vital. Things have to be put in their context, and shown at their best.

I'm sure I was proud of my photos when I first took them. There was the whole other dimension of getting them developed. There was anticipation to see how they turned out. There was also fear that it might be a missed shot. That's why I always took more than one – just to be sure.

One of the last times I looked at the album of our family's trip to Niagara Falls in 1964, I remember I was astounded at the quality of those black-and-white photos. Something in them surprised me. Black-and-white did not seem to be a lack of color. Black-and-white seemed to highlight the froth of the water, and the richness of the black shadows. It made Niagara Falls look more intense, mysterious, and otherworldly.

I was surprised at the power of a photo taken with the seriousness and the heartfelt enthusiasm of a neophyte.