urban daisy

The days have been balmy until now.  This week brought a refreshingly brisk change:  Brrrr!

Have I mentioned I love butterflies?  I do.  Each one is a work of art and an amazing feat of engineering.

The risk was that I would go insane before capturing an in focus image of this butterfly .  We don’t get this species at home, and it really is beautiful.  However, it doesn’t rest on the leaf: its wings move constantly.  I have a lot of blurry pictures of this butterfly!

But after an hour or more of trying, I have a few good shots.  This is not one I would chose to show the butterfly, but I was just so pleased at this feat of manual focus.  It may not seem so remarkable to the rest of the world, but considering that I have not long graduated from a point and shoot, I was so excited with my fast little fingers catching this shot that I emailed it to all my longsuffering family.  In my happiness, I now inflict it on the rest of the world, but you can chose to ignore it if you wish, or roll your eyes if you find shooting butterflies easy, or turn your nose up if you think they are not an artistic enough subject.

But you know what?  There’s nothing that can diminish my satisfaction at seeing that little butterfly face – whether it’s cool photography or not. =)

I love ANZAC day.  Our family always attends the dawn service and the parade.  This year I thought I would try my hand at recording some of my favourite images as opposed to my usual habit of crying like a goose when the old diggers go past.

The parade is normally well supported, so we decided to get there early so I could choose a vantage point to shoot from.  The confirmation that I had chosen the best spot came in the form of a rude little fat photojournalist. (I’m only just holding back from also calling him greasy, sneaky and underhanded, not to mention ungentlemanly.) He set up immediately in front of me, close enough that I could, had I had my wits about me,  were I not such a nice lady, have smacked him in the head as he deserved.  After forty minutes of standing in the sun with four children  (you need to have four children, and one of them a toddler who’s been awake pre-dawn, to understand how that ups the ante) I was a little indignant at his audacity.

My husband decided to champion me by graciously pointing out that we had been waiting a long time there, and could we not share the spot?  Apparently not.  It seems if you get paid to take photographs, you can be as rude as you like.  He replied that he wasn’t going to be there long. (Hello!  Nor was anyone else – the best of the parade passes by in the first five minutes!)

During the finale of the service that followed the parade, a similar incident occured.  The pipers were piping, I had just found a place to stand, lined up a shot, and click!  I had a blurred image of the back of the girl who climbed on the chair in front of me to get the same shot.  The pipers were finished, and I walked away wondering what sort of people take up photography for a living?  Retired pirates?

Learning about photography is fun: recording things that mean something to me or will inspire, inform or amuse others is a wonderful occupation.  While I would fain improve my skills and learn how to best capture the moment, the ruthless greed I saw yesterday was just plain scary!

The driver was a perfect foil for the fellow in the back.  Can’t you just imagine his passenger in a wingback chesterfield beside an open fireplace, with a glass of port or a pipe?  I don’t know what it was about him that appealed to me so, but I could have taken a lot of photos of that man.

Australia remembers her fallen.