Project 365 day 273: Simplicity

It was raining, and I didn't have much time. I thought it would be simple to take a few quick close-up photos of the beach pebbles I keep on my desk. I needed a little break between emails. First, I needed to sweep a couple of piles of paper aside to make a space at the end closest to the window; I grabbed my simple but trusty compact camera, which can take quite reasonable close-ups. I propped a piece of card beside the pebbles to form a basic reflector, which gave slightly more even lighting. I tried a few different angles and thought the shapes made quite a nice abstract composition - they looked ok on the back of the camera. When I downloaded them, late this evening, I found that I had not allowed sufficiently for the small depth of field at this distance - the smaller pebbles were significantly further from the camera and therefore not in focus. It's too late to think I can manage anything better (and I'm supposed to be boiling the rhubarb jam before I go to bed), but this is not the calm, perfect simplicity I imagined,  which proved not to be so simple to achieve. I will try to come back to this when I have a moment, as I think with more preparation and care it could be better.

Simplicity is something to which I aspire. We try to live moderately simply and reasonably sustainably - in particular by not buying lots of "stuff" (though I have already acquired far too much over the years), by growing and making as much of our food as it's practical for us to manage, by mending and recycling. However I find simplicity, outward or inward, difficult to achieve because my life and my mind, like my desk and my house, are far too full of clutter which gets in the way and distracts me from focusing clearly. Perhaps more light and a bit more distance would make all kinds of things clearer.

Thank you for Ingeborg for hosting Abstract Thursday. I liked the theme and wish I had taken more time and care to do it justice.