Photographing the Wild Small

I would like to take this opportunity to complain about my camera. I must insist that I am really quite a competent photographer, even in the face of all this blurriness. I was, after all the Marshfield High School Yearbook Photographer, very Winona Ryder. But those were the sweet days of all manual 35 mm. My current camera serves me quite well unless I want to get closer than, oh, three feet from an object. It's a shame, because I notice that so much of what I want to show you all, so much of what beauty and creativity and making things with your fingers is about lies in the details. At least my cats photograph pretty well.

Lisa requested more terrarium photos, so here is the best I seem to be able to do.And finally, here is A with his nose in a particularly photograph-resistant terrarium. Scott is out of town. Perhaps he misses him and sees a resemblance in the little gnome I whittled. At least my cats photograph well.Yes, they are all lidless. I began with lids, but found that for the most part the glass I had chosen pretty much obscured the view. I have one bell jar, and I've been looking for something spectacular for it. Perhaps I will find just the thing soon.

(Once, when A and I were still living a bachelor life, pre-Scott and B, I got him some beautiful guppies named Persimmon and Guanabana. For a good week he sat in exactly this pose, nose in the fishbowl, until they died, either from fright or kitten snot. He wanted to eat them post-mortem, but my human sensibilities got in the way.


Here he is, seven years ago, slimmer, head in an empty fishbowl. There should be some homilie or koan about this. Oh, I just recalled that once the fish had moved on to their next life as tigers or whatever, I stuck a wooden Buddha in the fishbowl. Have you all gotten to the age where you notice that you're quite consistent in your personality? It feels rather unoriginal.)