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When I first held a camera in my hand I remembered something I had once written about my father as he fled Europe as a teen. The words were, “Look up, look down, look all around and you will find the good.”

 

As I walk with my dog each day I practice looking up, looking down and all around. I notice.

 

It is looking down where discoveries await.  I have only seconds to investigate the many details, so one might find me on a sidewalk crouching over with a leash in one hand, a camera in the other. Whether it is at community gardens, neighborhoods or a busy urban street, there are  plants to overturn, seed heads that sail on puddles.  How can a root know how to grow into the earth and a tendril know how to stretch to the sun? How do flower petals find their flimsy form? 

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Between walks in all seasons, there have been discoveries on the cutting boards of kitchen counters,  where vegetables are revealed. Cut a slice of an onion and through onion tears, uncover its symmetry.  Overturn a garlic bulb. Lift it, examine it, feel the roughness of its terrain.  Open a simple cabbage and find the visage of a tree in its heart. 

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Look up, look down, look all around. 

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