Snap By Snap

When I was a teen, my brother gave me his Konica camera - a real 35mm camera. My dad grew roses in our backyard, and so I began with these wonderful photo subjects who never moved too quickly for my clumsy focusing, and always looked beautiful.

As I got older, I began to notice beautiful flowers everywhere I went. Once digital cameras came along and the cost of film development disappeared, I began to enjoy snapping flowers with abandon. Even better, I could use Photoshop to zoom in and view the details of the flowers as if I had a microscope! The structure of these tiny beauties amazed me. Some were so tiny - maybe 1/4 inch in diameter. And yet zooming in revealed as much detail as the large flowers boasted in their glory.

The tiny ones with their detail make me wonder - if I were even able to create such an infinitesimally small work of art, something many would never look closely at, would I take such care in the design? In the elements of the design too small to even see with the naked eye? I'm not sure, but think that my attention would be spent on the surface. Not so with this Artist. This perfect, intricate design, this carefully crafted elegance is not for us, it is merely (and profoundly) the natural fingerprint of the maker. He cannot help it, it is who He is.

These flowers were found everywhere from cracks in rocks to deserts to forest trails, in California, Florida, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin.