Forest Roses
Sometimes I fret that I overuse the word gratitude. That it might be a cliché to say, over and over again, how grateful I am.
And then I remember, there can never be enough gratitude.
I stood in the forest, marveling over the delicate pink roses growing wild, climbing like vines along tree branches. I tried to take their picture at different times over the course of three different days. Because the forest is dense there wasn’t enough light for the ISO 400 film loaded in my camera. So I had to go home, get the tripod and try again. I waited for pockets of sun to make their way through the trees, and then worried that those small spotlights would record as blown out highlights with no detail at all. I hoped the film would be forgiving. I don’t have a cable release for the film camera (though I’ve ordered one now) so I tried using the timer to see if I could make for a longer exposure. I’m really not a very technically proficient photographer, so these images were mostly a holy grail. Still, it was rewarding to try, and the results are a decent tribute to magic of perseverance.