Gardening, dancing, making music, making art… creating in general… When I engage and immerse my body, my mind, and soul in these creative activities, I both find and lose myself. I am aware that there is a me, but it feels kind of floaty, out-of-body; connected to a whole of good energy. I feel free. Happy. And deeply loved. Taking ‘making’ photographs of flowers with my dedicated macro lens gives me this feeling. The lens allows me to see miraculous fine detail that my naked eye alone could not. The wide aperture setting I chose for these shots (f/2.8) allowed me to play with shallow DOF — deciding where to put that slice of focus, and which parts of the compositions to bathe in dreamy blur. I go to a spot in the garden that I’m drawn to, and dial in camera settings based on the given light in the scene. I then try to let go of the cerebral part of my brain that made those decisions. I look through my lens to see, instead of using my eyes alone, moving the camera all about, pausing, turning the focusing ring. I don’t think much when I shoot. I feel instead. And when I get that buoyant feeling in my gut, I press the shutter release. One of my favorite moments from this photo shoot, was finding the delicious rainbow lens flare (as seen below — that was not created in Photoshop — that was a dance between the sun and the glass of my lens). And the cotton-candy dreamy blurs of color you see in these photos are either leaves or blossoms drenched in blur.
Instead of trying to marry these images with words to convey my feelings, I will let them speak for themselves. I am hoping you can tap into the energy that surrounded me as I moved through the garden, following my gut instincts and the Collective Whispers. 
I thank you for stopping by. XO