Project 365 - Up Close

Today, I decided to reacquaint myself with my 200mm micro lens.  I had put it away quite a while ago, promising that when spring came, I would drag out the tripod and bring my lens home.  I had visions of tiny spring buds and blooms coming into focus, revealing hidden color and nuances that only my lens could see.

This morning was cold.  The spring I had envisioned for my lens and I has been slow in coming. I hesitated, thinking about the prospect of bundling up, pulling on boots.  I began to look around the house for something would keep me warm and satisfy my need for a spot of color.

Project 365 - Red and Black Barn

I love barns. I can't help it.  My attraction may be found in my heritage.  I come from a long line of farmers.  My home town is still rural and full of wonderful reminders of a pre-revolutionary farming community. Most of the barns there are weathered wood or classic red and white.

Here, in southeastern Pennsylvania, the barns tend to be built out of field stone.  Beautiful and quirky from time to time, but always rooted and solid.

The other day, as I was on my way home from a shoot, I decided to take a different route home.  I came over a ridge and there she was, nestled into a gentle hill.  A barn that by all rights should have been snuggled into a fairy tale countryside.  I pulled over and, for a while, I just stood at the fenceline and smiled.

Project 365 - Rushing Water

Over rock and root,
Spring flows downstream,
Tumbling free and wild toward,
Still pools,
Waking,
Renewing,
Life.

Project 365 - A Girl and Her Dad

Sometimes life just happens.  Right there in front of you, everything that is important, wrapped up in one beautiful package.  A girl and her Dad. They are back on the trail now, but moments before they were both hopping from rock to rock in a spring swollen run.  Climbing over fallen trees.  Now they are chatting about fish and frogs.  Headed back to the car.  Yup, right there in front of you.  Sometimes life just happens and steals a piece of your heart.

Project 365 - Square Root

I have never been one for math.  But this?  This, I can wrap even this artist's brain around.

Project 365 - Betwixst and Between

Today my daughter, Maddie, turns twelve.  And, like every other Friday I drove her to school.  As she got out of the car with her usual smile and quick wave, I happened to look over to where she had been sitting.  There on her seat lay the blanket that she has slept with every night since I can't remember when. In her cup holder was a Wawa coffee cup filled with her morning decaf.  And I was struck with the incredible notion that I was witnessing a transformation. A moment betwixst and between.  A child on her way to adulthood.

At home, I did what a photographer might, I recorded this moment.  A piece of childhood rubbing up against what will be.

Project 365 - Yellow Snow

Spring is a dirty trick.

It lulls you into dreamy anticipation with illusions of warmer, longer days.  Woos you with the fluttering of a gold finch dressed in it's newly vibrant hue.  Serenades you with the songs of peepers and toads in love.

It does not tell you how easily it turns a cold shoulder and coats your joyful, yellow ribbons with snow.  It snickers in the folds of the winter fleece you had all but put away.  And as it blinks, how the sun hides behind a thick, gray sky.

Spring, quite simply, does not ever play fair.