new vision

I was surprised with a new camera today!  (Three cheers for great husbands.)  My old camera had served me well, but somehow, something had come loose inside its casing and migrated onto the lens -- which meant that in every photograph I took, there was a little dark speck somewhere in the field.  It shifted around some, but it was never absent, and it was really, really annoying.  My new camera?  Its viewfinder shows nothing but clear, crisp (depending upon aptitude of user), beautiful views, free of irritating foreign matter.

I spend a lot of my time wandering about like the lens of my old camera.  The world is a beautiful place, but my appreciation of it is marred by internal irritants cluttering my field of view.  I am easily distracted by the things that are bad, and they cloud my vision of that which is good.  The parable of the camera, then, serves as a useful reminder that my appreciation of the world around me will be much stronger when I first clear my own vision.

From before I figured out the difference between "auto" and "intelligent auto."  But the mid-air bee is nice! 

It is hard to avoid the super-close-up view when photographing a needy cat.

Cotton candy azaleas.  (I have no idea if that is what they are actually called, but if they aren't, they should be.)

Blue sky!

Here he comes again...