1984 - Optimism, Patriotism - turning points in the face of difficulty...

I miss him more than ever every time I think of his words...  ...first a classy one, then a charming one...

Details...

I've heard it said, "The Devil's in the details..."  Sometimes it seems that way - particularly when you find out about the fine print regarding the use of your rewards miles.  You THINK you have those miles at your disposal, but you find out that you have to use them on the fifth Tuesday of every other odd year in a month that ends in "A".  "Perhaps," I have thought, "it would be easier to forget the way I thought I had 'earned' them and just think of them as rewards for the efforts needed to cash in on them."  I found an old rewards card in one of my many junk bins the other day...  ...I am tempted to call it in... ...then again...

I've heard it said that some people are detail oriented, a statement left to itself that implies that there are people who are not.  (Detail people are re-reading that and are now laughing.  Quietly.  Because their spouse can read minds, and they can't afford alert them - again.  Well, at least this spouse would be...)

Here are a few details that I found around the yard...  ...due to the web sizing thing, though, the details are a bit reduced.  I had more detail in my mind when I took them.  The camera is fabulous, but the combination of "flighty" bees (get it? Flighty!?) and nicely breezy afternoon breezes, and now the web re-sizes (not to mention a rookie photo editor) have taken their toll on the detail that I got vs. the detail that I had in mind.

The Raspberries are looking better than ever, but they aren't very showy flowers.  Swarms of bees on them during this "shoot" and I still struggled to get a good, clear picture.  Now I know why the fancy pics that you see in the glossy coffee table books are often done in the studio.  With a motion-sensitive sensor that activates the shutter and a flash...

Strawberries are more showy, but certainly didn't have the bees' attention that day.  I shot all of these with my wife's 50D and 28-70 lens.  Macro it is not, but then the bees didn't seem to like having me around, and I respected their wishes so the telephoto was useful here.  I have a nasty habit of focusing in the middle - another discussion - and framing my shots the way I want them in the prints; so this was an attempt to make use of a low ISO (100) and tight grain to crop them in closely.  I think it worked out OK, but Crystal would have gotten the exposure correct and not had any of that blotchy stuff...

Wild roses are a favorite of mine.  I like the smell.  I used to draw these - sometimes I would paint them.  I found that the domestic varieties are much easier to represent than these for some reason. Details are all over the place in these, and they are obvious, but understated.  The petals are sort of a fat heart shape, simple, yet intricate little vein structures weave through them from base to tip. Terms that come to mind - delicate and brilliant.  Centers are stashed full of stamens and offer a challenge to any artist's hand at mimicking their short-lived array.

This is a wild lupine - they are thick all over the county right now.  I always liked them, but it wasn't unitl I shot this that I realized how the flower structures resemble the Lady's Slipper or the Indian Mocassins - much rarer flowers.

Finally, your "average" columbine.  Our weed-infested flower bed has this huge variety of colors of them that just sort of re-seed themselves.  Every spring has a large contingent of blues, yellows and whites and, more recently, the ones shown here which are the result of some cross-pollination to be sure. 

This is likely one of my best pics of this flower.  The challenges are first locating a flower that hasn't had the uppermost nodules chewed ragged by bumblebees who, apparently, cannot or will not sqeeze into the openings on the bottom-side.  Focus and angle are made difficult by the shape of the petals and the flower's depth in top-to-bottom as well as front-to-back.  I like this pic because it turned out OK (I think?) and there is a lot of subject matter to consider - not only the one flower, but also the others in various stages of blossoming.

I would guess that I might have taken 200 pics on this one outing.  Of those, you see here the few decent ones that I liked.  None of them is perfect - pics I mean. 

The flowers are as close to perfect as I could hope to find.  They remind me of Matthew 6, in which Jesus tells us to consider the lillies of the field, which is here today and burned up tomorrow, yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.  Some details!

In fact, the beauty is exasperating to reproduce whether "on film" or with paint. 

I "detail" things for a living.  I take an idea drawn on a white board or a "napkin" and put it into the computer in a 3D model, then put that in a drawing with dimensions and tolerances that hopefully work together as a manufacturable part that also fits in an assembly.  (I did say "hopefully", right?)  Some of the stuff that we do is boxy and fairly easy to do.  Some of it is shaped all crazy-weird, defying your every attempt to model.  I cannot imagine designing any one of the flowers above.  Nevermind the rest of the plant, its systems or the symbiotic relationship that they have with the bees.  It is mystifying to me that Someone could see details needed for life like this AND do it with such precision and beauty!

Whether you appreciate detail the way I do or not, our Heavenly Father certainly does, doesn't He?  There is no Devil in those details...

Clucking it over...

Just a couple of biddies... ...talking about important stuff I am sure.