Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Today we took a trip to Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, a place I've wanted to take Jim for a long time now.  Their hiking trails are associated with the Cornell Ornithology Lab and I thought Jim would enjoy looking for the birds.  For myself, I've been working on getting back some of the "photography mojo" I seem to have misplaced recently and this seemed a good opportunity to practice.

As you probably know, I took a couple of photography courses recently.  I believe these are how my photo-mojo seemed to go missing.  I understand that learning new techniques for anything will naturally result in a learning curve, so I wasn't too surprised that I didn't feel like these courses helped my photography very much.  I understand my camera a little better and I appreciated the overview of the technical aspects like ISO, aperture and f stops.  But my pictures suffered!

One of the courses was called "Landscape Photography" and I was so stupid as to believe this referred to taking pictures of nature and the like.  I like taking pictures of flowers and animals so "landscape" seemed close enough.  The very first thing I learned in this course is that landscape photographers take pictures of ...(wait for it)....landscapes.  Huh. 

This got me thinking about "my" photography.  How would I describe what I like to do with my camera?  Here are some pictures from this week as I've been working on regaining a personal comfort level with my pictures and camera:

These are from Sapsucker Woods today:

 (You'll notice there are no birds here)

And my personal favorite from this week from the weeds in my front yard:

It occurs to me that I like to take pictures of the smaller pieces of the big puzzle to bring some attention to the beauty of the parts of the whole. 

You know that phrase "He can't see the forest for the trees"?  I think it's the opposite of that.  I like the trees in the forest and sometimes ignore the bigger picture (haha) while I focus on the details.  Like my personality, but that's for another blog post on another day.

I badly want my photo-mojo back before we go to Ireland.  I do not expect to experience the details of our family history while there especially since I have no idea where any living relatives might even be.  But I am hoping to get an idea of the big picture about our Irish heritage:  the lay of the land, the culture, the history.  I will carry with me the list of our Irish ancestors and their Irish roots.  On the Ryan side:  Timothy (maybe from Tipperary); Capt. John Bentley and his father in law Martin Costello (Galway); Conlons (Sligo); James Handran (Kilkenny).  On the Flynn side:  Ellen Breen Flynn (Clare) and Julia Fisher Nevins (Meath).

See you on the other side.  Of the Atlantic Ocean!