With the Eyes of a Child

Until I started taking pictures for the various photography challenges on Word Press, I had never had any photography experience.  I was amazed at the beautiful pictures an Android phone could take.  Not long thereafter, I realized that I was beginning to notice things I had never seen before.  It was as if my eyes were opening to the world around me.

I had an interesting experience last week when I walked to my neighborhood schoolyard.  It had rained the night before.  My eyes were pulled to curves that had formed in some mud, where the mud met a bit of water.

I took a picture of the curves and then kept on walking.  When I glanced at the photo I had just taken, I wondered what the object in the top right hand corner was.  I hadn’t seen anything on the ground except for the mud and the shallow water.

As I arrived at the place where I had taken the photo, I noticed that the “object” was actually a reflection of trees that were in the distance. I decided to take another picture, one from a bigger perspective.  In the new photo, it was much more obvious to me that it was a tree reflection.

I then took a backup picture, as is my normal practice. When I examined that one (see below) I saw something that hadn’t been in the previous photo.  In the bottom quarter of the picture….towards the center…….. there were some concentric circles.

I looked back at the ground in front of me.  Once again, there were no circles in the water.  What was going on?

I felt as if I was part of a mystery, and it was fun.  I decided just to stand there and look at this thin puddle of water to see what would happen next.  Before long there were more circles, although they weren’t as obvious as on the previous photo.  I took a picture of the new ones.  Look below and you can see them in bottom third of the photo… on the right hand side.

As I continued to watch, I figured it out.  While it wasn’t raining now, it had been earlier.  Occasionally an isolated drop of water would fall, either from the sky, or be blown from a tree, and when it hit the puddle the circles would form.

As I pondered all of this, it seemed so simple.  Why did I not realize it all along?  Perhaps it was because I am taking this new journey into photography with the eyes of a child instead of those of an adult.  In this childhood state, everything is a mystery, a grand and wondrous mystery!