Have an Eye for Detail


‘Twas a brisk Saturday morning as I headed down a familiar road and took the occasional right turn. I had been down this gravel road before and recognized the small trailer houses and that one Jeep that never seemed to move. Just before the road ended, I took a quick left turn and zipped down an inclined path that led through the forest and down to the riverside.

Of course, I had been here before, as well. Earlier in the summer I came here on occasion and, through the course of the season, saw a broken swing replaced with a freshly painted one, almost as if magic gnomes did it. Of course, gnomes didn’t do it. If they had, the yellow paint would not have obviously faded since then.

An Eye for Detail

It was rather quiet here, and I had never photographed this place before. I began looking at the area with an eye for detail. I noticed a tree with pocked marks on it and guessed that it must be from a woodpecker. Unfortunately, I am not a naturalist and cannot confirm this.

Stopping only briefly to snap a shot of a hazardous sinkhole down to certain death, I noticed that the sheerly broken oak stumps reminded me of tiny futuristic skyscrapers and went in closer for a macro shot. Macro shots can be quite enjoyable because they force one to examine the true texture and form of an object, and they also give one a good opportunity to use a wide aperture which blurs the background yet keeps the subject in perfect focus. By using Macro, one can experience life through a chipmunk’s eyes, for instance.

He Strains His Life

Ever committed to getting a great perspective, I leaned on a tree overhanging the river to capture a shot of another curving tree over the lake. Then I noticed how the wind affected the water and took a few shots of the ripples in the lake, as well. Because I was now being shaded by the trees and using zoom, less light was reaching my sensor, so I had to turn up the ISO speed – otherwise every shot would have been blurry.

I did what can best be described as “unleaning” from the tree and noticed a big change from the last time I’d been here. The once half-submerged little aluminum boat was now turned upside-down and propped between some trees for the winter. Somehow it looked comical, and I snapped a few of the boat.

The Rainbow Rocks

The Rainbow RocksSatisfied, I headed down the narrow stairs to the dock. I noticed that the boat’s usual resting place now had an array of interesting pebbles and sand formations where the boat had once been. Indeed, even the pebbles were beautiful that day, and I discovered The Rainbow Rocks, a collection of very small pebbles that was pleasing to the eye. I then snapped a few more Macro shots by the dock, this time taking a photo of the metal loop used to tie a boat onto the dock.

As I was walking back up the stairs, I noticed that even the lichen on the trees had photographic potential and used super macro mode to capture the fine detail of the lichen on the oaks. Looking around for the last time, I seemed to have captured most of the points of interest here and headed towards the gravel road. It was a good photo shoot, and I learned that most anything can be interpreted artfully if one can wield an eye of detail to behold it.

What do you think? Was there anything I ought to have done differently?


Photos from this trip are in The Rainbow Rocks. All photos can be used as desktop wallpapers because they are high resolution (1920×1440) just as the fullscreen & widescreen wallpapers are.