Photography, Life, Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Weight of Water
Dewdrop macro photography as a metaphor for life
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles
“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”
— Lao Tzu
Peering through my camera lens, I fine-tuned my distance from the nasturtium leaves, playing with bringing the soft skins of dewdrops into focus, then holding my breath to freeze the moment long enough to capture it.
The most challenging part about macro photography is that only one thin plane of the world you are trying to photograph is in focus at any one time. You can shift that plane forward or back by moving your own body a hairsbreadth closer or farther away. Or you can play with the tilt of the camera and the whole perspective of the image changes.
To me, these perfect “crystal balls” looked like little universes unto themselves. And I never even saw the tiny yellow bug in the first image…
