why i like to take photos i like to take

I am listening to this. You try it.

I just took this picture. It feels good to me to look at it. If you click on it, it gets bigger, and better.



I like the colors, and the jumble, and the closeness.

A long time ago I wrote on a blog that I was going to write on my blog about close-ups and what they mean to me. I don't think I'll write very well or very much, but now's the time I'll fulfill that promise.

Objects don't look the same when you see them sitting on a table as when you put your eyes at tabletop level and then look at the objects. When you look closely at something, it can seem more like it's yours than it did before; it can seem prettier than it did before; it can seem stranger than it did before, so strange that it makes you feel the strangeness of the entire world, of life itself, because you have looked at that thing many times a day for many many days and only now seen this strangeness it has. Like your keys, maybe. You might just then notice the grace in the thing; you might just then notice small details, remember the fact your necklace beads are held together with red string.
Sometimes being closer to objects like that makes me feel less unsure and unsafe in the world, in a small way, maybe because then the objects surrounding me have more presence, then life seems slightly more real. Maybe I have more presence. With more familiarity between my surroundings and me. It is like in The Little Prince, with the fox, who tames the prince or does the prince tame him? because they see each other at the same time every day, because they see each other over and over and out of all the foxes this one is the best, out of all the princes, this one is the best.
Anyway, a person can get very used to and fond of an object, a necklace, a lighter, if you start to see it as part of your own presence or whatever. Like a stuffed animal, when you were a kid. And how safe you felt with all the stuffed animals around you.
Other times, looking closely at things doesn't make me feel safer or anything like that. I feel just as unsure, just as much a part of my problems, but it is still nice all the same to see prettiness and strangeness, right there in front of me. It is good to know I can see it. It's, I guess, poignant somehow.

This of course goes with photography, and art, in general. It all runs together into these ideas about close-ups.
I hope you know what I mean by this, that I am not too garbled.