My Favourite Things: Photography

I absolutely love good photographs. I don’t have anything against artwork and do appreciate certain styles of painting (although my sister tells me I have boring tastes in art), but I’m not sure that I could ever spare the wall space for such things. I always have too many photos to hang and not enough wall to hang them on.

I have loved taking photos ever since I was old enough to use a camera. If I remember rightly, my first camera cost me $3, which was about the same as what one roll of film cost back then. Amazingly, it actually worked! I have recently been asked by several different people to take pictures for them, so I guess my love of photography must be pretty obvious.

To me, photography is a form of art – and it’s one form of art that I can actually succeed at because it doesn’t require me to create beauty, but rather to recognize it and capture it. Of course, a good photo does often start with being in the right place at the right time. It’s a whole lot easier to take a beautiful picture when you have beautiful subject matter!

Exactly a year ago today, a friend and I got to visit Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge (Oregon). My verdict: a classic case of “right place and right time”! :-) It was absolutely beautiful. I wish we could have stayed and camped there or something. And made all the other people go away. Haha. This my favourite of the pictures I took that day:

It’s probably also part of my (rather large and not clearly defined) collection of all-time favourites, although it unfortunately lacks the sharp focus and crystal clarity that a better camera would have been able to achieve.

Perhaps one day I will be able to buy a digital SLR camera. It’s certainly on my wishlist. There are times when I don’t even bother trying to capture the shots I can see in front of me because I know I will just end up frustrated by the limitations of my camera. 

But I shan’t complain. My current camera takes great pictures for a point-and-shoot, and it’s far superior to my previous one which I lost while riding down a mountain on the roof of a car. Lol. I was rather sad to lose all the pictures on it, but it gave me a legitimate reason to buy a better camera. And at least it was a good story! :-)

 

Under His Wings

I have been thinking again recently about these pictures I took a couple of years ago when I was housesitting for some friends: 

I can’t help but love baby animals...                               and I think these ones are exceptionally cute...

...but that's not the main reason these images have stuck in my mind. 

Until the day these ducklings hatched, I had always read verses that refer to taking refuge under God’s “wings” without giving a whole lot of thought to the real-life situation from which this metaphor arises. These verses didn’t create any mental images for me. I never thought beyond my surface reading: it’s a symbol of protection and safety.

Yes, I know it’s obvious, but I had never thought before about the fact that the wing imagery reflects a mother-child relationship. As I watched this mama with her beautiful little babies, I realized for the first time what an incredibly comforting image this is. These ducklings are offered some degree of physical safety under their mother’s wings, but they also feel safe because they are close to the one who is nurturing and caring for them.

The words of Psalm 61:4 have since taken on a new depth of meaning for me: “I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.”