Daily Archives: July 14, 2019
The Generous Eye: The best stuff just happens! Happy Sunday.
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
If you go about with your eyes wide open, taking a generous look at nature in the world around you, you can not help but be surprised by the stuff that happens. 🙂 Even more, if you photograph nature, you can not help but be surprised by the amount of times you manage to capture the stuff that happens. You can not plan for this kind of stuff. It just happens, and you have to just happen to be there with your camera, and just happen to have your camera ready to take a photo…or, more likely, you take a bunch of photos and only discover the really good stuff that happened when you get back home and are processing them on the computer or tablet. That is what happened here. I was photographing Rose Pagonias and Grass Pink Orchids in the remnant bog at Laudholm Farms one day last week, and came back with hundreds of images. While processing this one, I saw the tiny cricket/grasshopper-like insect on the leaf next to the blossom. Though I have tried my best to identify the bug, I have had no success. Most crickets are not out in plain sight during daylight hours, and most grasshoppers have definite wings.
I am not sure what the bug is, but the fact that it is there in my photo of a Rose Pogonia makes for a special image. The best stuff just happens, and happens often enough so any thinking human being is likely to wonder…to feel a touch of awe (which is concentrated wonder), not to mention a good deal of gratitude. God is good. God is good everyday and all the time, but every once in a while the best stuff happens, and you are reminded just how good God is. May something good just happen to you today…and that is very likely if you take a generous view of the world.
Wood Lilies already!
With a backlog of bog orchids and other wildflowers from Laudholm Farms this week, I was certainly not thinking about Wood Lilies when I took an ebike photoprowl out to the back side of the Kennebunk Plains yesterday. I was thinking of skies and landscapes, but as soon as I turned down the fire road that goes to the back of Day Brook Pond, I found the Plain covered with one of the most impressive displays of Wood Lilies that I have seen. I have never photographed Wood Lilies on that side of the pond…I always find them on either side of Rt. 99 where it crosses the Plains on the other side, so maybe this is a typical display for the area off Maguire Road, and I have just missed it all these years. Lots of lilies and lots of tall lilies, and many clumps of lilies. Checking last year’s photos of Wood Lilies, my first shots are from July 16th, on the other side of the pond, so the timing is right…I was just not expecting to see them yet. Nice surprise. So now I have a lot of Wood Lily images on top of my Grass Pink and Rose Pagonia orchid images from earlier in the week. Such abundance…but that is July in Maine for you! If you are into wildflowers, at least.
On this image of a double blossom, you will see, if you look closely, that there is a tiny Green Metallic Bee in flight above the lower flower. The Green Metallic Bees were all over the Wood Lilies, and I have to suspect that they are a major pollinator, at least out on the Kennebunk Plains.
Sony RX10iv at 326mm equivalent. Macro mode (in Scene Modes). Processed in Polarr.