Ramblings on a Mediocre Photo

One time, after posting a photo on Facebook, a friend asked me what kind of camera I have. "It takes great photos!" he said. It was an innocent comment, but it's actually the photographer who takes the photos, is it not? And in fact, a couple of my favorite all time shots were taken with cameras that are not even one-tenth as good as the one on your fancy smartphone.

Here's one I took with a very low-resolution point-and-shoot (probably over 15 years old) that I bought used on Ebay for about $30. I took this using a mini-tripod. Of course, part of what I love about this picture is how happy I was to catch that fish. And aren't those some of your own favorite photos, the ones where you were happy?

Here's one I took with my $50 smartphone. This was at the Detroit airport, on our way back from our nephew's wedding.

Another friend recently asked  if I edit my photos, and the answer is "almost always." Here's an example of a picture I took, and then the edited version that I posted on Facebook:

Now, this is not a particularly great photo, in my opinion, but it shows a glimpse of the process. It's also an interesting photo in that it represents part of my development as a photographer. Two years ago I would not have noticed this tiny flower. But today, as I walk through the woods or along Main Street, my eyes are open in a new way. They are open to light and shadow and texture and lines and sky and tiny things that mostly escape notice. And they are open to the details of the forest that are rarely seen, the fiddleheads emerging from the leaf litter, the spore producing stalks of moss, the bud scales on a sweetgum tree, and the difference in the bark of a red oak as it gets older.

The tiny thing in the picture above is the female blossom of an ironwood tree, Ostrya virginiana. Ironwood is monoecious, meaning each plant has two different types of flowers, male and female. Other examples include birch, oak, hickory, pine, corn and squash. Some plants like hollies and the gingko tree are dioecious, meaning a plant contains only male flowers or only female flowers, i.e. a plant is either of the female sex or the male sex.

And that's a thing I never would have noticed if I weren't keeping my eyes open for a photo.