In my late 20s I put my camera down for several years. I had come to think that the camera and my constant looking for pictures was getting between me and my experience of the moment…all the living moments that make up life in this world. But then, in my 30s I picked a camera up again. I was in a brand new landscape, beginning, in many ways, a brand new life, and I missed the focused attention, the machine in my hands that forced me to be attentive to the moments as they passed…to be just that much more aware and vigilant to see and experience. And I missed being able to preserve and to share my experience of those moments. And I came to realize that photography is, for me, a form of worship…an act of praise…a pointing out…a highlighting of those moments when God is speaking in creation…whether it is a landscape revealed in ever changing light, or bird caught being a bird as only a bird can be (like this young male Purple Finch), or the unlikely beauty, the totally other beauty, of a bug in a flower bud. I learned to set my camera up so I don’t have to think about technical photography…only about putting a frame around the speaking moment. It is good practice, because, of course every moment speaks…God speaks every moment into being…new and never before seen…every moment is worthy of that frame, if we only practice to see.