“I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time,
though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”

― Brenda Ueland

I stand and watch the light as it comes through the red maple outside our bedroom window, debating whether or not if I should grab my camera. I have taken a few hundred photos of light streaming through this tree in the three years we have lived here, and I have to ask myself if I really need another one.

I can’t let the light go however, and come back with my camera only to find I am too late and the light is gone. Over the next couple of days I study the tree a bit more closely, walking around it, noticing the time of day the light is best, and the details of the tree. I wonder what I might try within my camera to express why I am drawn so to this light. Wanting to get beyond the beauty of what I see and reaching instead for the emotions that rise within me, I attempt a few images over the next few days. But somehow I can’t seem to get it, and am disappointed when I upload the images to my computer.

It is only when I stop trying so hard and let go of the focus some by allowing my camera to move and flow a bit, that my heart begins to race.