Travel to the Macroverse – Part 2

I recently started revisiting the macro universe. The pictures in here are a follow-up. First, I got up very early one morning to go visit some Brooklyn gardens and parks in the stillest air I could summon, but dawn is already quite hot and dew cruelly absent, so my success was mitigated by breeze and dryness.

The next shoot was done during a walk through the woods of Staten Island’s Wolves Pond Park with a few members of the New York Mycological Society. While everybody crouched and discussed pores, gills, stems and edibility, I took my tour to a broader macro level.

These images are best enjoyed in three stages; first you glance at them and take the painting-like character in. The color, the shapes, the surreal vividness and the abstract patterns that inhabit them will reach your eyes just as a first sip of a Nelson Estate Shiraz comes up from a glass, new, complex, loaded and powerful.

Then you suddenly think, well, this reminds me of something. You come up with planets, oceans, flowers and plants that you know life-size, bizarre objects and all kinds of references to the things you see, touch and feel on a daily basis.

Finally, when the surprise gives way to curiosity, you start digging in and look for a sense of scale, and you realize that you are looking at the infinitely complex world of what lies beyond our normal visual acuity. You are reminded as I said before that nature finds great comfort in duplicating itself on all levels, colossal and microscopic, up to the limit of both our horizons, and beyond.

This is when the fun starts for me. There is no way to know in advance what the camera is going to show me once I point my lens at a macro scene. Sure, I am getting better at anticipating potential, at seeking certain kinds of textures and color contrasts, at looking with the inner eye. Still. The surprise is well worth travelling by subway, ferry and train to a distant island, or getting up at 5:00 AM on a weekend in hope of fog and dew.

Yeah, the stupid forecast was for hot, humid and breezy conditions. But look at what I still found! Handheld, 10 minutes from home, in a quiet Brooklyn waterfront park. We walk by it every day, we often step on it, we ignore its very existence. I give you the macroverse.