Petals of Pearl
I’ve been seeding the garden with all sorts for a year or so, not knowing what may grow, and every now and then a little wonder appears through the overgrowth. This one has been budding for about a week and finally opened yesterday, some – half of the petals anyway. And today it opened up completely to the spring sunshine.
It’s a little beauty and I’ve been working it to see what happens, image-wise. That’s one of the things I love about nature and photography, I never know exactly how a shot is going to picture – there’s the shot and then there’s the picture produced. And I don’t want to know.
A wonderfully creative way to spend a few minutes, or hours, in sense. To see what a flower looks like and is. The creases and shadows on the white that give it its texture, the shape of the petals that give them their magical quality. And the yellow, heart of the flower, giving up to the prince of light – the Sun.
Yellow face I’ll call it, in a halo of pearly white.
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It doesn’t have to ‘make’ sense, only to be it.
Whatever that means.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Genesis
… is now.
And the Lord said “Let there be Light”, and there was light enough to reveal the earth, here and now. And there ‘was’ movement – of form – on the face of the deep – non existence.
As the pre-born bee stirs towards existence, coming slowly into its senses – the same ones as you and me in the morning – it reaches a point that must be called born. Warm and blind in the darkness of its solitary being, sound and smell rapidly expand as it breaks the curtain of its leafy cocoon and light strikes its eye for the first time, as the hammer to a bell.
The light of the sun, father of earth, strikes the centre of intelligence bee is and instinct turns to action and quickly comes to speed for the prevailing conditions of sense.
What, what is this new world to me? Sense, form and function, what else?
And something to do. What beeings do, of course.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Cicada Ladies and Nights
She must have just dug herself from the earth and climbed the rough barked cutting I left against the Hibiscus. As I came along she was getting comfortable, locking onto a leaf. Looking closer I could see she was about to emerge from her old shell of an earth dweller, hard, smooth and bristly with big front digging ‘arms’, to become an air dweller.
Then she started pulsing and I knew a birth that I hadn’t seen before was imminent, so I got the camera.
I sometimes go into the garden at night with a small torch, nothing fancy, to see some nocturnal stuff.
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The house where I live is probably one of the original Queenslanders in this area, judging by the condition of some of the wood. And the garden has remnants of the coastal wetland forest it once was. I find all kinds of bugs around the house I would normally expect to find in the nearby forest, reminders of another time.
There are many small Cicadas coming out of the garden at night but this was a big one, about three inches long from nose to wing tips, and it’s rare to catch an emergence like this – for me. I was in position for a few shots and I didn’t want to disturb her and once the process began it didn’t last long, about fifteen minutes before her wings were filled and she was changing colour from the creamy white of a new born.
She climbed slowly out of the old form, filling the new as she went.
The will, a singular focus, unhurried intent.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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