Like Father, Like Daughter

My dad has always been the family photographer. For as long as I can remember he has always had a camera. When I was small, it was this wonderful old twin lens reflex Yashica (to be fair, it probably wasn't that old at the time) that I was absolutely fascinated with. As time moved on, dad bought himself a treat -- a Canon SLR. He even invested in one of those big telephoto lenses. And he started taking some color pictures, even though it meant that he couldn't develop them on his own. Nowadays dad has a digital camera -- his current fave is a Canon EOS Rebel SLR. It gives him the limitless possibilites for photography that you can only get from digital media.

No matter what camera he has in his hands at any given time, however, my dad has always loved to take pictures of flowers. If you were to look back through the old contact sheets, prints wrapped in yellow Kodak photo processing envelopes or to dig through the image archives on his computer, you would find all manner of flora. Everything from the humble dandelion to the most complex orchid has made it's way in front of my dad's lens. And the thing of it is, most of them are quite good. He's got an eye for the small things, my dad does.

So perhaps it is no surprise that when I am not taking pictures of my fiber endeavors, I am often taking flower pictures of my own. The macro mode on my new little Canon is just incredible, and while I don't have quite the artistic vision that my dad does, I'm beginning to look for those things that make a photo interesting. On Sunday, a beautiful day here in Chicago, John and I took another trip up to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. The light was beautiful and the many of the roses are still in bloom. Can you guess what I did instead of get started on a new pair of socks?

So there is no knitting in this post, but I do want to introduce you to a fun new toy I have installed to work with Movable Type -- the Photo Gallery plugin by Byrne Reese (I would put links here, but the ones I have are not behaving themselves right at the moment -- if you're interested, Google, they are bound to come back up). Just click the picture below to take you to the entire set.

And, as always, I'm thinking of doing more with this gallery than just posting flower pictures, so let me know what you think, and feel free to leave comments on the pictures if the spirit moves you.