The above image is, of course, a photograph. It represents the small, orange egg of an insect, and it represents the end. Eggs are most often symbols of new life, of beginnings, and the image certainly represents that as well, but a photograph wraps up a story in a single frame, a momentous expression; the whole novel is read in the span of the camera’s illuminating flash. And the end is in there, somewhere, I tell you. I am not sure if it is the end of an individual creature’s purposeful life, or perhaps, the last moment of this new individual’s perfect condition, or maybe even the end of the photographer’s day, but it’s in there.

Some ends are out of the purview of our time — the ends of loves and friendships, wars and nations, the universe, -verses and, for all I know, time itself — the ends that will outlive us. Some, however, are all too clearly not out of our time: divorces, lost friends, lost jobs, and deaths. The pain we feel pervades a moment of (to stay on topic) underexposure, and many times it is hard to process, if not escape. There are happy endings, and maybe even happy deaths — even outside of movies and books — but it is much easier to succumb to the sadness and darkness of ending things; I know it too well. But in my photographs of tiny subjects, I see a simple truth and am blessed to capture it: all things that begin, must end. It’s hard sometimes, but I hope, like a camera, I can capture the frames of wisdom when they flutter through the viewfinder of my heart and into that moment which can only be called ‘peace.’