Why Post Photos On Gather?

I don't know about others reasons for posting photos on here. I post them because I want to share the beauty I have found in this world. There is way too much horror and blood and guts.

 I mostly take photos of flowers, as most who keep up with my postings know. In close to four years I have taken over 20,000 photos. They range from flowers to mushrooms and anything else that gets in front of my camera lenses. I love ice storms, not because I like cold. Nope, not because I like cold weather but because of the beauty of the ice covering everything with this crystaline case.

All you have to do it look around you and you will see the beauty of what grows and lives and surrounds you every day. I look closer than most do. I see the part of the whole, which if you look at a garden most see the riot of color. I see the individual flower, the single petal, the one leaf among the many. I capture the moment for others to see what I saw. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did when I first saw it.

Stop and look closer at the tree you walk past every day. See the leaves, the bark of the trunk, the roots with which it brings the moisture from the ground to it's leaves. All make up the tree but do we really see the tree or only the image of a tree? Do we really see what is around us every day? Or do we only walk blindly through the day not seeing the beauty that is there if we only looked. The small wild flower growing in the crack in the sidewalk. It's tiny flower easily overlooked in our rush to get to where?

Why Post Photos On Gather? Not to earn points, who is really going to get 3,000? Not to get people to say what a beautiful flower or photo and post a comment or give a value to what they see. That is all great in its own way. But to share the beauty I saw that one moment in time which was captured. To bring to light not my talent in taking what is there for all to see but to share that beauty with all. Maybe to get you to stop and look at a sunset, a child playing, a rose which is past its prime and is fading away. All this is beauty, all is there for us to see every day of our lives.

We are not taught to see. Some have an inate talent for seeing what is there for all to see only we don't. An older cousin taught me to see when I was very young though I don't know if he really knew that was what he was teaching me to do. He would flip up a sheet of the calendar hanging over the fire place at my aunt's home, leaving it up only a few seconds. Then dropping it back down he would say what did you see in the photo? Name everything you saw. I learned to quickly see the whole of the photo then to see the individual parts of it. All in that few seconds I saw what was in that photo. It took me a few trys but I learned to see what was in each one and became very good at it.

I had an art student ask me about an asignment she had been given by her teacher. It was to draw a glass or transparent container with water in it. She asked the teacher how do I draw it. He answered draw what you see. How could she draw what she had never been taught to see? He assumed she could see. I explained to her that you can't draw transparent. What you draw is the reflections and distortions of the surrounding objects which cause you to see the glass. You aren't drawing the glass or the water since they are transparent. You are drawing the objects which are around them or under them, not the glass or water. We aren't taught to see what is around us in the every day world. Even though we are semi aware of what is there do we really see it? Think about it do you see the individual flower in a garden or the color of all of the flowers? Do you see only one petal of a rose or the whole rose?

I photograph the individual flower causing you to see only that one flower. It was in a garden with many other flowers. I saw the beauty of that one flower I made you see the beauty of that one flower. There were no other flowers in focus in my photo. The background is out of focus, only the flower you see is in focus. I make you see the beauty I see. Did I create that beauty? No! I only brought it to your attention. That is why I post my photos on Gather. To share what I see every day in this world.

I hope you enjoy what I see every day. Please look around you with renewed sight today or tomorrow. See what is there, it is beautiful.

Thank you for reading this.