I used to feel pangs of guilt when I took my weekly walkabouts at the Huntington Library or Los Angeles County Arboretum. These are favorite places Barbara and I enjoyed, and for fifty years, we'd make a day of it, taking our daughter, then taking our granddaughter to the gardens.
Now, I walk alone. And enjoy it. Hence those pangs.
Alzheimer's Dementia has taken away Barbara's easy mobility, and vocabulary. Because she no longer has names for things, she doesn't see details in the environment. "Look at the butterfly," I might point, and Barbara scans the area uncomprehendingly. When she speaks, Aphasia denies Barbara intelligibility.
Living with dementia is a lifestyle, being a caregiver is a new career with no Union to back up the worker, and no Boss except time: do it now, and what remains?
Respite: a complete absence of thinking about responsibility.
I take my respite with a lens. Used to be--before the GOPlague--I photographed writers, principally poets, reading their own stuff in front of an audience. I want to make a perfect foto of an oral communicator. The speaker in the foto displays confidence and poise; dynamic posture; arresting eye contact; mouth and lips forming speech; body in control of the space.
Every speaker creates moments of perfection during a presentation, except people with their noses stuck in a manuscript or iPhone screen. The photographer's challenge is listening keenly, anticipating something good, and pressing the button when it happens. Nearly Perfect will be good enough, and often, extraordinarily satisfying.
The plant occupies a corner of the Garden Court, a busy to-and-fro area keeping Colibrí infrequent feeders. Today I waited fifteen minutes for a bird to swoop into the canopy. I stood still watching the feeding hummingbird drift from plant to plant, moving from shade to light, left to right, nearer and nearer the lens.
As she tasted each of the six clusters, I snapped off a dozen frames. Sated, she hovered a few feet from my face expecting and receiving my thanks for wondrous pictures. Not her fault the darned shade makes most of the frames unsatisfying. I know now this foto exists and that means it can be done again.
In actuality, the insect moves across space so rapidly that a foto like the floating frittilary at the Buddleia cluster comes close to perfection. Now the photographer recognizes it's important to step to his right half a step for a stronger image of the wings. This is a definite mira nomás!
This angle looking down at the sweeping spread of orange catches the texture of the folds and veins of the wings, as well as the richness of color in this light.
Mira nomás!
This angle looking up to the underside of the wings catches both top and bottom patterns of this beautiful butterfly.
The Coast Frittilary challenges me to capture the silver sheen those white spots emit. In my eyes, there was silver in the wings as I pushed the button. In the camera's eye, the silver shows just as contrast and a suggestion of grey. I don't know if that silver is photographable. I'll keep taking Frittilary fotos until I know for sure, and give up, or show off.
Insects and close-ups is the kind of photography that's puro respite. The photographer works in a crouch down low, making sure of balance and passersby. Left eye open, he keeps the whole scene in perspective, tracking approaching flyers. The right eye, staring through the lens, sees a few inches of landscape but synchronizes with the left perspective to triangulate the creature, move the lens and focus. An effective frame is filled with flying or landed insect so no blow-ups when sharing.
There's no attention space for anything but the creature and the moment. Push the button and set up another foto. Keep that attention focused on light and life, 150 or 300 frames in 2 hours and 2 miles.
I've been visiting the Caesalpinia plants since their bloom cycle began. I was a long walk distant when I saw the Black Swallowtail hovering then landing. A faster pace got me to the plantation in time for the butterfly's last browse of the flowers before it finds a zephyr and rises above the trees.
Catching a flying Swallowtail at a great distance is easy if you're not going for a close-up.
For a close-up you have to get close up. Skitterish creatures, Swallowtails. The take flight if you look at them, so serendipity and fast reflexes give you an acceptable frame. Sure wish I'd been there five minutes sooner.
So it goes.
As I walk toward the parking lot my lively pace begins to trudge and by the time I push the gas pedal the respite has passed and it's back to the world of responsibility and consequences.
It is what it is.
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