object of my affection: light

i have to thank someone new, urbaniche, for stopping by, commenting and thereby leading me to her blog of the same name. she did a really enchanting this girl post that you should read to start with. but her most recent post was on objects of her affection and i felt really inspired by that. because, as we know, i'm pretty affectionate towards certain objects - stones, eyeballs, converse, my nikons. but ultimately, i think it's good for my currently restless soul to spend a bit of time pondering these things. (aside: the little search this blog button at the top of blogger blogs is really sucking today big time, it's not returning proper results, so it's definitely not an object of my affection at the moment.)  

i've recently become quite addicted to snapfish, a photo service, which i signed up for through being gold on SAS (they're the ones running that contest where i entered the picture of sabin jumping on the wet trampoline (if you haven't voted, please do, only a few days left!)). they regularly send me good deals on developing my photos, which is something i don't do often enough now that i take mostly digital. the reason i like it, other than the fact that having photos physically in your hand is magical,  is that it has caused me to go through my photos attentively, selecting the ones i'd like to have printed. (and yes, this IS about to have something to do with the object of my affection.)

when i'm going to upload, i create an album in iPhoto and i drag all of the pictures i want to develop into it, for easy upload once i go to the snapfish site. so it's making me put my best photos together in one place. which means i noticed something interesting. the light.

light is the object of my affection. spring light, summer light, autumn light, sunset, morning light, candlelight. i love them all. i'm not a huggy person, but if i were, i would give light a great big hug.

i wonder if i would have so much affection for light if i didn't live in these northern climes? it's dark so much of the year, perhaps i'm more appreciative of the light while it's here.

bad genes are good for something

i was just scrolling through the 33,477 photos i have in iPhoto on my iMac (thank goodness for that terabyte of time capsule backup), looking for a particular event (if you don't have iPhoto, an event is the way iPhoto organizes your pictures, so it's kind of a folder in windows terms). and i kept getting lost along the way, stopping to click into other events that had nothing to do with what i was looking for. and i realized there are a lot of folders that i've called "macro" something or other.

because in case you hadn't noticed, i'm a bit of a fan of my 60mm nikkor macro lens. and with the ability to focus exactly where i want to on the D300, i spend a lot of time with that lens. and me being me, i couldn't resist thinking about why that is. because otherwise in life, i'm not known for my attention to detail (a solid meyers-briggs ENTP). i'm a big picture kind of person. so what is it about the view that the macro lens affords that i find so fascinating?

and then it hit me. the macro lens sees in a very similar manner to my own eye (hmm, i guess i wasn't done with that whole eye thing after all). i'm really near-sighted. like one diopter from a dog. my glasses are -7 in my left eye and -6.5 with the right. there are places where -8 is legally blind. but of course, i can correct my vision with contacts and glasses and i do so. but without correction, my own eyes work a lot like the macro lens. there is a point of objects that are very close that's in perfect, sharp focus along a line and it fades quickly along the edges and in the background. i have little depth to my vision and without glasses can only see something that's held very close to my eyes.

so i've come to the conclusion that my eye feels at home with the macro lens. and i have to admit that getting down into the details of things, noticing and really studying something up close, through that lens, has helped me to be more mindful in general. i notice my surroundings more, including the small details that used to escape me. i guess i can thank my bad eyes and my 60mm macro. maybe i'll have to stop trying to get my parents to pay for my glasses, arguing that it was the fault of the bad genes they gave me. it seems bad genes are good for something after all.

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on another note: you should go and check out SE'LAH's beautiful "gift of jewels" project. it's a beautiful idea and it involves getting a lovely card in the mail from a wonderful blogger somewhere out there in the world. kind of like postcrossing, but more personal. it's in celebration of the ethiopian new year, but also in celebration of the community found here in the blogosphere.  here's a list of who is participating already, but you can still play too! just scoot on over to this post on the necessary room and sign up by friday!

how i spent kristihimmelfart

kristihimmelfart has something to do with easter. it's ascension (ascention?) day. or whatever. i don't really know what it means. i wasn't really paying attention that time i got sent to bible school for a week when i was 4. i think it's a funny name but that's because i'm kinda simple when it comes to it and it involves the word fart. i wasn't around anyone named kristi today, so i don't know about the farts, but i do know about frogs. because i spent quite a long time trying to photograph frogs. they were singing like crazy before i went down with the camera. do you think they would continue when i got there? of course they wouldn't, so i never did catch them with their little cheeks all puffed out. and i had a little staring contest with one (which i lost, undoubtedly because i don't think they can blink). but it was green and glorious and wonderful to be outside. i'll be able to sit down to work tomorrow, totally refreshed and renewed because i was able to spend most of this glorious day outside.

i also found out something about husband today. he actually has a blog. he created it, but has never written anything on it. and to think i thought he thought we were all completely mad. 5 ants are more than 4 elephants. he's super clever, don't you love that title?  husband is such a keeper. i'm not sure he's really going to blog, but i followed him, just in case. i think i've already been following him for rather a long time, but now it's official.