The last peony

I am still enamored of photography. I found I have a little program called paint, a pale imitation of Photoshop, but despite its simplicity, I can't use it. So I am thinking, just do what you can do, which is take pictures. Above, my try at a peony picture that is not too sentimental, for the background flower is browning. Both are hanging, as they do, sometimes flopping right down on the ground after a rain so they look like a petticoat thrown there.

I have a nothing-much digital camera bought in 2003 (!) so I imagine the technology is much better. I would especially like to lose the gap after your press the shutter, before it takes the picture. This is fatal to pictures of the grandson, and it makes even photographing a peony more difficult, because I have a little tremor (and can't find the tripod). It has a macro feature as well as an adjustable close-up, and I don't know what the difference is, though I use both of them. But they are far from the zoom capability a lot of people have.

I got my hands on a book about digital photography that told me, Know what you're taking the picture for. I knew my constant spill of pictures of my grandson, that is about capturing a reminder of the moments of his growing up.

The other thing I do with pictures now is post them here. I think the best kind of picture for the blog is close and simple, because the picture is small. Above is all the closer I could get to the peony, 4 inches. At that distance you smell it perfuming the air around it. It continues to do that in a vase in the house. And when the flower dies, I strew the petals on newspaper to dry. Later, sitting in a bowl, they continue to release their sweet, innocent fragrance.