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In
the summer of 2004, I began to pay close attention to
flowers. I had recently bought a professional digital
camera, and had a good old manual macro lens modified to
work on the new camera. Soon after, I started
photographing floral close-ups. Working with these
images on my computer was like looking at the flowers
through a powerful magnifying glass, a revealing new
perspective for me.
I
photograph these floral images in sunlight without a
tripod. The strong light produces dramatic contrasts
and textures. The process is spontaneous and intimate –
my camera quite close to the subject. I also find I
often talk with the flowers as I photograph them: "Oh,
little blossom, you are the most gorgeous shade of
yellow,” and their replies take form as my images, which
themselves become my inspiration, celebrations of God's
presence.
Some
photographers will say that for color photography there
is nothing like the beauty of projected images. Light
passing through transparencies reflected from a screen
designed to transmit that light has a special quality.
For digital images, this luminosity is available on the
computer monitor. I grouped some of my images into a
computer "slideshow" and gave copies to friends. In this
sharing, there was further discovery. I had seen my
images as celebrations of the beauty of creation, but
their re-creative function came as a pleasant
surprise.
For the
sequence of images can be arranged to appear on one's
computer screen after a pause of half a minute or more.
Sometimes such pauses occur because the person seated at
the computer is stumped about what to do next. When my
florals appear thus on the screen, sometimes the viewer
is taken away by their beauty and forgets the problem at
hand. It is then that an answer to that problem may
emerge from a liberated intuition.
Some who
have seen the sequence have simply said that it is about
God's handiwork. This assertiveness of the beautiful,
healing nature of creation put me in mind of the text of
"Rejoice in the Lamb," Benjamin Britten's festival
anthem (1943). I had sung it in a choir some thirty-odd
years ago. The words are taken from Christopher Smart's
brilliant and idiosyncratic poem, "Jubilate Agno"
(1762):
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For the
flowers are great blessings.
For the flowers have their angels,
Even the words of God's creation.
For the flower glorifies God
And the root parries the adversary.
For there is a language of flowers.
For the flowers are peculiarly
The poetry of Christ. |
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Though
Smart was deemed insane at the time he wrote the poem,
he seems to say very sanely in this fragment that flowers reflect
God’s glory and counteract the fear of death, that they
reveal God’s continuing creative presence. Further, he
says that their individual lives and the drama of their
cyclic reappearance are metaphors of resurrection.
No
wonder we surround our altars with flowers! |
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As a
Chicago-based business communicator, Richard Adams’
writings, photographs, and design work have appeared in
newspapers, books, brochures, films, the Internet, and
print advertising throughout the English-speaking world.
He has written corporate histories for a half-dozen
major American businesses. He now produces publications
for one of the nation’s leading marine construction
contractors.
Adams has been an Episcopalian since his early twenties.
A church musician, he has sung in and conducted numerous
choirs. For fifteen years, he was cantor at St. Luke’s
Church - Evanston, Illinois, and he now performs on the
recorder with the St. Augustine’s Chamber Musicians -
Wilmette, Illinois. He is active in small group
ministries at St. Augustine’s, where he has served on
the vestry and chaired the parish’s Christian Outreach
Commission, and is a lay Eucharistic minister. He is
also a father and grandfather.
Email:
frarico@sbcglobal.net
Parish: St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church - Wilmette,
Illinois |
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