Down at the ponds on Back Creek yesterday on my photoprowl, there were lots of Northern Spreadwings, and several mating pairs. It was a still day, with subdued light..patches of sun but mostly clouds…waiting for a font to arrive…and the reflections on the pond were lovely. There is a lot going on in this image. The surface tension dimples around the stems of the delicate yellow flowers are fascinating. I think the deep one under the damselflies is caused by the weight of the flies on the adjacent stem. Their weight is pushing water “up” the stem and it is flowing into the dimple next to it, forming a small vortex with is pulling the dimple deeper. That is my theory anyway. Whatever is causing the effect, it adds visual interest and beauty to the image.

Then, of course, you have the damselflies themselves, perfectly mirrored in the still water for a shape that is simple in its apparent complexity…once the eye sorts it out. Finally you have the surface of the water, laced with what might be spider webs, or lines of pollen, or underwater vegetation…whatever…they add texture to pale silver-blue and delight the eye. All in all, this is an image I could look at a long time.

It is not perfect. It was taken at the full reach of my SX40HS…1680mm equivalent, with the digital assist of the 2x tel-converter function. The digital tel-converter works really well on highly detailed subjects like birds or close-ups of dragonflies…but when, as here, you have large areas with little detail, the digital artifacts are fairly apparent. I used some noise reduction in Lightroom, but if you were to blow the image up too large it would basically fall apart. Too large is say, to fill a 24 inch screen or larger, or to make a print at 11×14 or larger. I know the limits of my camera…but still…I would not have gotten the image at all with any other rig (can you see me on my electric scooter with DSLR and enough lens to reach this shot?). I might have come close with a very heavy crop, but that would have left me with about the same image quality. So I am happy to view the image at “regular” sizes and enjoy.

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.  1680mm equivalent. f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. And I did crop it for composition and apply the noise reduction.

And for the Sunday thought:

I never took as many local images as I have since starting my Pic 4 Today blog, can it be…four and a half years ago…and I have never worked my local patch as hard as I have these past months when I am on “travel restriction” in my job…all my summer trips are canceled. If I want to take pics, it has to be fairly close to home. And on my electric scooter (my primary photoprowl transport in this summer of car complications) with its range of 10-12 miles round-trip, and I find myself visiting a few local locations over and over…and enjoying it. It is surprising the range of photographic interest such a small radius around my home can provide. I am loving it.

My fairly recent interest in photographing Odonata has helped, of course. It gives me motivation to go back to the ponds today, since there may be new dragonflies and damseflies that were just not there yesterday. But the real delight is finding images like this one…that transcend the subject to create a thing of beauty in itself. It might be the grand landscape of the Kennebunk Plains under stacked cumulous clouds, or it might be the patterns the high tide as made of the tall marsh grass, or it might be a Song Sparrow on a branch with a bug…or it could be pair of mating spreadwing damselflies reflected in a pond…but just about every day I find one image that makes me say “I love that!” That image touches my center of delight. You see there, I have just defined at least the surface level of love. We love what delights us.

Of course, we know that beyond delight, love must move us to commitment…to commitment to the good of what delights us. Love that does not move us to serve and preserve what delights us, is not love. Ultimately love that does not move us to delight even in the unlovely is not love, according to the best example we have been set in God. Hence the question mark in the title today. It is a challenge as much to me as anyone else, and, honestly, an open question in my life. Is it love? Is that what I see in Northern Spreadwings reflected in a pond. Is that what I am finding as I work my local patch these days?

Time will tell.