Okay, I was gonna wait to Father's Day for this, but then decided, nah, I'd go ahead and post it today.  The picture below is for my father.  I really, really think he'll like it.  I need to tell you two things:  One:  If you think that this is a picture of the girls, you don't know my dad very well.  Now, he loves his granddaughters and I think truly enjoys receving pictures of them, but if you could see the stacks and stacks of photos from when I was growing up, you'd realize that most of the pictures of the kids were taken by my mom (or by my dad at my mom's prodding) - the pictures that daddy took of his own free will were an assortment of random pictures - everything from garbage cans to shots of statues taken at very, very different (read odd) angles.  There were lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of nature shots - a random flower, a leaf floating on the water, a bug (or a swarm of them).  When I was little, I loved these pictures - now that I'm grown up, I love them even more.  These pictures, more than anything I've read or seen since, taught me that photography is about more than snapshots of people or even places - to me a camera is a tool to capture the world - all of it - the good, the bad, the ugly and yes, even the strange.  If you took a peek into my computer's directory, you'd see all kinds of pictures of things that probably, on the surface, seem ridiculous, but to me, they are photos that follow in my father's footsteps.  Now, I don't know this, but I suspect that my dad might harbor a secret desire to be a National Geographic photographer - although I guess I could be projecting my own secret desire to be a National Geographic photographer....  I do know this though - if there's one person I have to thank for my love of photography in general, and my love for macro and nature photography specifically, it is my daddy. 

Now, the second thing I have to tell you is:  If you're a bit squeamish, turn back now....I'll leave a little space so you have to scroll down to see the pic and the explanation:












With my new camera, I got a sweet, sweet, sweet new macro lens - when it's on my camera, in some ways, it's like looking through a microscope.  Now, in theory, I got this lens so I can take those adorable close-up baby shots of fingers and tiny toes and eyelashes and pouty lips.  It also doubles as an excellent portrait lens (the picture from last week of Gracie on the ground was taken with that lens).  But, the true awesomeness of a macro lens is when you take pictures of teeny tiny things and make them larger than life - it's like a whole new world opens up.  Sunday afternoon, Steve, the girls and I were sitting on the back porch eating hamburgers.  When we finished,  Steve and the girls headed back to the pool, and, as I was getting ready to get up and join them, I saw a fly land on my camera case.  I had my camera out with the macro lens on, so I decided to practice (more than anything I've done with my camera before, macro shots take practice - lots and lots of practice).  I fiddled around with my settings, even playing with manual focus (something I've been loathe to do, even when my camera is set to full manual mode).  I took several shots and then two interesting things happened - 1)I realized that manual focusing was actually kind of fun and 2)the fly flew away and landed on the other side of the table - on the remains of Abigail's cheeseburger.  And while the black camera bag didn't really give a nice background for the mostly black fly, the gooeyness of the melted white American cheese and the fluffiness of the Seasame seed bun from Abigail's burger created an awesome backdrop.  So, I took a few more shots and was more than pleasantly surprised when I got this one:



Now, honestly, I don't think you get the full effect unless you see it bigger than this, so click here to see it a little larger.  I like this shot for a lot of reasons:  I think it looks cool; it's fairly sharp which is a little difficult to do when you're a mere inches away from your subject; from a technical standpoint, I stepped out of my box to take it.  But mostly, I like it because I think my Daddy will appreciate it.....So, Daddy, what do you think?