“Earth laughs in flowers.”
           ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

At 11:08 pm tonight, I was filled with the need to take a photograph. It's a strange thing when such a strong need drives you from repose straight into action. Some people have more mainstream urges: raiding the refrigerator at midnight, chocolate, ice cream or some other metabolic need. Not me. I am compelled - propelled - to take a photograph tonight.

I wander   through the darkened house to my office/studio where the camera sleeps at night. "What?" I mused. "What to I photograph at this hour?"  I'd recently been reading Dave Black's blog about lighting adventures in Mexico. "Nah", I said. "Too much effort to drag out all the flashes and wireless remotes. It's too late and I'm just too lazy for that."

My family-of-origin has been in my thoughts all day. Outside my office door, the gardenia bush I'd transplanted here from my father's home after he died over a decade ago was beginning to bloom in a cacophony of delicate beauty and insane perfume. It is one of those things I don't understand: the more I neglect this bush, the more blooms it gives me.

So I open the door and step outside into the smoke and humidity and gardenia nectar of this Florida night in May. I hold a bloom in my hand, so soft, so tender, so like a newborn.

Inside, my eyes search for a light source. Inspired improvision makes me smile; with that same smile comes the answer. In mere minutes, the gardenia bloom is held precariously in my left hand by the grip of a a single-hole punch, tight up against the glow of my incandescent desk lamp, while my right hand holds the camera.

Still, be still. Hold your breath. Squeeeeeze the shutter gently.

In that moment, I no longer believe photographs are made. They are born.

We all make peace in our own ways.

nikon d2x, nikkor 60mm micro, 1/60 , f/6.3

“Everything is made of light; everything is alive. The Great Mystery of life has little to do with intelligence. The universe is not an intellectual process. The intellect is helpful; but our hearts are the wiser part of ourselves.”
           ~Mellen-Thomas Benedict

It's Friday! I open the office door as sunset approaches, searching the clouds that stream by overhead for any sign - any hint - of a good sunset of vivid color. The air is thick with humidity and it is high tide in the canal.

I spend a few minutes in the hammock, watching, watching, thinking about the day and the evening to come. It's been a long week and I'd rather just hang suspended here alongside the canal. Light begins to fall all around me and tugs at that part of my brain that must capture it.

The light at the beach is gentle. Nothing vivid or breathtaking. No green flash, but the thin crowd gathered there claps anyway. Conversations float in the sea breeze as pelicans fly north just offshore.

I wait and wait for the light to change. I wait for the lush blue of civil twilight.

And as I put a wrap on one last shot before I head to the car, I see the lights of one of the resort condos across the street over my shoulder.

I smile and shoot it.

It's good to look over your shoulder now and then.

It's good to put something new in a frame.

TGIF.

nikon d2x, nikkor 24-12 vr @  24mm, 30 seconds , f/14