"Smile, Beautiful"

Well, spring doesn't officially start until tomorrow. But the plum tree in my backyard doesn't know the difference. Every year, it bursts into a puffy cloud of fragile pink blossoms. 

And every spring, it draws me irresistibly outside, camera in hand. 

Macro (close-up) photography has been one of my interests for a long time. In this world, it's often the biggest, flashiest, noisiest things that attract the most notice. But macro photography focuses in on the tiny, the delicate, the overlooked, perfectly-formed, miniature miracles hiding in plain view. 

Like plum blossoms.

And to make things even more fun, this year my good friend Audry showed me some techniques with camera apertures. Oh boy. 

Turns out smaller F-stops (lens apertures) focus on smaller depths of field. They draw your eye to just one tiny part of the image.

Instead of getting overwhelmed by the whole, you can focus the intricate beauty of one part--and maybe see something there you never noticed before. Look at the different textures of the pink petals and the red encasement--smooth and bumpy, frilled and veined. So much detail in such a small space!

Isn't God amazing? All this beauty, like getting a card in the mail for no reason. It's just God saying, "Smile, beautiful. I made this for you." 

 Happy spring! What tiny miracles can you find in your world today?