January 28, 2008 – One thing I love about my life lately, is that I seem to have lost my mind, and fallen in love with small things, things I never even used to see – like dead leaves. Or maybe I’m finding my mind.
  Whatever else is happening in my life, I get up before the sun pops over the mountains and into the woods, and I am always mesmerized the different ways the sun plays on things each morning, and from different angles. Taking photos has opened my eyes to this, and I am lucky I am not so blind anymore.
  The dogs, in the wondrous way of dogs, fit this into their routines. There is nothing I do so strange that they don’t get used to it, shrug, and incorporate it into their schedules. Now, when I pull the camera off my shoulder, focus and adjust the settings, Lenore comes over and plops down next to me in that Lab way and keeps my company. Izzy drops down and watches, perpetually fascinated by his erratic human, and Rose finds something useful to do in the woods. She has no interest in photography.
  As for me, I was lucky this morning to see the sun hit dead leaves in three different and beautiful ways, and was also lucky, for once, to have the right lens with me – a 180 mm great for detail shots like this, even at some distance. All three photos seem especially beautiful to me, the recognition of the wonderful beauty in very small things. I love dead leaves, and so perhaps I have lost my mind. About time.

I love this picture, above. It speaks to the luminousity of life, in that these dead leaves, ugly things, lying
around surviving all winter, in the right light, are beautiful, touching, works of art. I wonder if this isn’t what art is about, seeing things in different lights, rearranging colors in different ways.  This is when the sun first shot through the woods.