I'm about to hear a ratchet click of yet another year of age. Time is truly flying by! One way I try to 
keep track of things is by taking photos. It started as a hobby, then grew into a business about eight years ago. And it is also therapy. Photography helps me to stay in the moment. Photography is also exciting, and post-production is as exciting as capturing images.
My girlfriend Jen and I are back home, but our hearts are still in Turkey. 
As I sit at my computer post-processing photos from Cappadocia, I still can't quite get my head around the magic and immense beauty from that region surrounding the town of Goreme. Not only was there natural beauty, but also signs of ancient history everywhere we looked. On our first morning there, we saw Cappadocia from the air - a glorious early-morning balloon ride.
I can see the stone wall of the Missouri Botanical Garden from my front porch. It often beckons to me. Though my walks are often brisk, I bring a camera to slow me down to catch a brilliant color, an engaging pattern or a playful reflection. Sometimes, I sit for 5 or 10 minutes and try to meditate.
At the MBG, there's people watching, of course, and this often causes me to think of the people I care most about--how could this not be the case in such a beautiful place?
But the two things come to my mind almost every time I visit the garden:
1. David Attenborough's "Private Life of Plants." (It's about the only thing I keep my VCR for - it's not available in Zone 1 on DVD). It's a beautiful video series that blurs the line between flora and fauna, when plant growth is run in fast-motion.
How are portrait photographers influenced by their preconceptions about the subject. Quite a bit, it turns out, based on this clever experiment. "Portraits can be shaped by the photographer’s point of view rather than just by the subject being documented. Created by The Lab in conjunction with Canon Australia, the clip features six photographers, one portrait subject and an unexpected twist. The twist consisted of the (mis)information each photographer was given regarding the person being photographed."
I'm enjoying photography, especially portraits. The final products are fun to create, but what is it that I'm looking for in a portrait? I'm convinced that photographers can benefit from some of the findings on what it means to be attractive by those who study biology, and specifically, evolution. The above-linked Wikipedia article has lots of information on this topic of physical attractiveness as explored scientifically. Here's an excerpt pertaining to women:
Research has attempted to determine which facial features communicate attractiveness. Facial symmetry has been shown to be considered attractive in women, and men have been found to prefer full lips, high forehead, broad face, small chin, small nose, short and narrow jaw, high cheekbones, clear and smooth skin, and wide-set eyes. The shape of the face in terms of "how everything hangs together" is an important determinant of beauty. A University of Toronto study found correlations between facial measurements and attractiveness; researchers varied the distance between eyes, and between eyes and mouth, in different drawings of the same female face, and had the drawings evaluated; they found there were ideal proportions perceived as attractive. These proportions (46% and 36%) were close to the average of all female profiles. Women with thick, dark limbal rings in their eyes have also been found to be more attractive. The explanation given is that because the ring tends to fade with age and medical problems, a prominent limbal ring gives an honest indicator of youth. In a cross-cultural study, more neotenized (i.e., youthful looking) female faces were found to be most attractive to men while less neotenized female faces were found to be less attractive to men, regardless of the females' actual age. One of these desired traits was a small jaw. In a study of Italian women who have won beauty competitions, it was found that their faces had more "babyish" (pedomorphic) traits than those of the "normal" women used as a reference.