“Small
things are not small things for the small!”
- Mehmet Murat ildan
-
“Awesome
does not look the same close-up as it does from far away”. - anonymous
“If
you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment”. - Linda McCartney
Awe and wonder come in many
forms. There is awe in light - sunlight, moonlight, the light that crisps
itself in molecules of snow. There is wonder in darkness – the soft, velvet
wrap-around of a moonless, summer night; the shadows secreted in the bark-skin
of a tree deep in the Cimmerian shade of the forest.
My place has awe and wonder
that I didn’t even grasp until the wonder-full gift of a particular camera
lens. A macro lens that acts as a circular doorway into the vast worlds of
small beings and locales. Over the last year, I have been learning to see,
learning to simply be ‘aware’. I am learning to open my eyes – to my place, to
texture, shapes, curves, lines, patterns, light. My place has become like a
Muse, constantly tugging at my mind or my heart to “Look! See! Wonder!” Now
with the addition of this small lens, I am discovering secrets, bewitched
confidences.
Ukrainian nature macro
photographer, Vyacheslav Mishchenko, takes us into the diminutive, but movingly
emotional, universe of snails. It is magical – the world seen through the eyes
of a snail (or any other small creature) is full of pathos, poignancy, and joy,
just as our own world is. His photography features snails enraptured by a drop
of water; or stretching with ardent longing towards each other. Now I, too, can
discover these other universes, these other ways of being.
Mishchenko advises, “I would
ask a photographer to be patient, to develop artistic taste, to be romantic and
finally to love nature”. How could I not be romantic or love nature,
when disappearing down the small again, large again rabbit hole, like Alice in
her wonder-land - in one instant too big, but in the next finding her
way into another cosmos through a small door with an even smaller key.
I
am fascinated by the minute, desiccated veins of drying leaves; by the grey
worn wood of fences, and doors, and old barns that looks like old wool. By the
glittering lines of a spider web that scores an evening sky; or the detail of
shape and space in a crow’s shed feather. I had not noticed these
infinitesimal textures or spaces before.
Thank
you, my sweet, for with this gift of a small lens, you’ve made my world bigger.
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