For photographers the Carpe Diem of seize the time is de rigeur – we must be mindful of the best time of day for the best kinds of light, More often than not it’s a case of making the most of the moments we have which means going with the flow of whatever the weather has staged. I just needed to get out for a walk and took my camera along, just to see what was out, out there!

Sure enough the sky was non-committal with rain threatened for later whilst a cold breeze was gathering to ruffle all the daintiness from blossom and foliage. I noticed too the urgency in myself – of having missed so many moments that Spring had already offered up. I need to slow down, stop and reflect.

So much of the early blossoms and tree flowers were already past or passing yet there is also something captivating about these interim stages of change

when flower gives way to leaf and buds break out the green

My interest was particularly peaked by these yellow-green bunched blossoms

– with sparse folded foliage resembling a carapaced alien

“Oh it’s just Sycamores” I thought, though I’d seen them many times before, especially one such specimen hanging its flowers defiantly over my previous London garden and inevitably spreading its fecund seeds around. And in this copse there was indeed a carpet of saplings.

Still their individual beauty was remarkable and the upright, rather than dangling, blossom clusters puzzled me until further research revealed these not as our native Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus L.) but the Norway Maple (Acer platanoides). How easily I had made assumptions and not clearly seen what was actually there!

A photographer can describe a better world only by better seeing the world as it is in front of him

Robert Adams –

Lesson 1 learned from Howarth’s ‘The Mindful Photographer‘ – and I’d even practiced Qigong and meditation that morning!