Yesterday and again today I’ve been thinking about Frost’s suggestion that poetic seeing and poetic thought and poetic expression bring order to an often chaotic, confusing world.  I didn’t write a poem yesterday, but I did walk the neighborhood with my camera looking for whatever was there that could be captured as an image which might provide a momentary stay against confusion. As often happens in the middle of summer in San Diego, I was dazzled by a dizzying profusion of color and form... fairly described as a confusion of flowers. I like to think the act of “taking a picture” is a bit like making a poem.  I look through the viewfinder and try to see what should be left out of the frame and what should be included in it.  When all the elements of the scene come into a satisfying relationship with each other and the confusion gives way to satisfying form, I press the shutter release and take the picture.  Every now and then, not as often as I’d like, I get something that is very satisfying... a momentary stay against confusion.

Yesterday’s yellow flowers are called Gold Medallions.  I saw what Fibonacci saw a thousand years ago, a predictable order in the natural arrangement of leaves and petals; but it’s easy to miss the order in the jumble of leaves and petals and flowers, each distinct from each other, as they cascade in masses of green and yellow. That’s what photography is always all about... seeing and capturing the order that is there in an image that can be kept. Photograph has a chance of becoming art, for the photographer and for the person who looks at a captured image, when we rid our minds of preconceptions that dull our senses to fresh insights.  That’s the way I see it.