A Slacker's Walk in the Garden

Well slacker day number 1, if you can count cooking lunch for 170 people being a slacker.  Whatever the case, I got home and decided to take a nap and then struggled to talk myself off the couch, despite wanting to go on a bike ride....and then it was dark.  Daylight savings time.  Needless to say, I didn't take any pictures today, so I will search among my pictures from previous and find something to share.

Today I was going to challenge myself to looking at the use of zooming and image orientation.  So here is a little zooming I did when I visited a private gardens with my mother this summer, you can just see the sculpture in the middle of the picture amongst the trees, in the first picture, the second picture is zoomed in so that the sculpture is more prominent.

Here is another sculpture at the same gardens, I like to think that the angle of the photo/image orientation set on point and making the composition diagonal, aids in the effect of the creature looking as if it is taking off.  But truthfully, it is probably all just the sculptor's ability to shape the steel.

This next one falls in neither of the categories I was looking for since it is a square picture, but the path winding through the middle of it aids in pulling your eye down the path,  Something one might try to achieve with a vertical picture.  So I cropped it into a more vertical orientation and what do you think?  I think it does achieve the ability to draw the eye even more and center you focus.

Here is another grouping of pictures that I took at Bryce Canyon.  These I didn't crop, but rather turned my camera while I was viewing this wonderful creation of God's.  A hike I thoroughly enjoyed and I have a feeling would frequently repeat, if I lived in Utah.  Never really I had a great desire to go to Utah, other than I did want to see Bryce Canyon, but now that I have been there and seen the terrain, the bike paths, the hiking trails, and the beauty of it, I long to go back someday.  Leave me a comment and let me know which image orientation of the two you like better.

 The last picture I will share today, is another one with a diagonal composition, giving it a look of action, more than if it was taken straight on.  This sculpture is called, "Seeking Nothing", it is in reference to an American monk who once said "one of the hardest things to do is nothing - especially for a long time.  The hands of the sculpture reach for something, and that something is NOTHING!"

 It takes me back to what I was writing yesterday, about distraction and what we are focused on.  Not trying to say God is nothing, but rather that when we are seeking God and to "be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10.  At times I seek to sit still before God and seek to hear his voice, but I become distracted by the many things that are going on around me or in my head - to do lists, chores, appointments, responsibilities, and the list goes on.  When i see this sculpture I see an earnest heart, striving, actively seeking, seeking nothing - or rather in my interpretation, a stillness before God where His voice can be heard, His presence felt.  And so I finish with a favorite verse of mine, Jeremiah 29:13 -"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."