Monday, January 23, 2006

What is Beautiful - The Eye of the Beholder

Scrolling through my screensaver photos this morning, I decided to delete those that for some reason didn't deliver that 'Wow' or 'Oh, my' or that little twitch at the corner of your mouth that precedes a smile which are my litmus tests for a place in the queue. Some I'd found on the internet by "Googling" snow or daffodils or spring landscapes. Many are snapshots I'd stuck in drawers over the years and marked 'nice . . . .'
On analysis, the images that made the cut shared one or both of two qualities.
1.) Something is about to happen. Energy and chance balance at some tipping point. Change hovers in a shaft of sunlight made visible in morning vapor or in frost sublimating in a river's breath or in the rapt attention in a deer's eyes. One feels that tingle of anticipation in the ephemeral now.
2.) Captured whimsy - a snow angel glowing from the snow - one person's flapping celebration of a snowstorm recorded for a starlite evening on the winter lawn of a college campus or snowmen wrapped in twiggy embrace.
The snowy egret I've posted above is one I captured on film years ago. He qualifies in both categories - don't you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh mercy, that is just beautiful. I was looking for a picture I had seen on your blog some time previously and just happened to find this one. Wow!

Cathy said...

Laurie - Thank you! I haven't been in this neck of the woods on my blog in a long time and it was nice to be reminded and take another look.