Looking into the crystal ball

  Have you ever pondered what you might see if you could look into a crystal ball. What would your future hold?  Would you honestly want to know?  The more I think about it, the less I want to know just what this world will be like in the far future.  At the rate things are going, it does not bode well for most of us.  But, then again, we cannot worry about what things MIGHT be but only those that are here and now.  We should focus on what needs to be changed then step up to the plate and at least make an attempt.  It is not easy.  Life is not.

  That said, have you ever photographed anything through a marble? Ha!  Most likely not.  These thoughts do not usually occur to most folks. Only those of us who search in the dark corners of our cobwebbed minds, think of these strange things.  "I wonder what it would look like if I took a picture through a marble?"  Yep, that is what rattled about in my brain at four o'clock this morning.  It was worth trying at least.  So, I gathered things together played.

  The photographing "through" a marble did not work out as well as I had imagined.  The idea was good but my marble was not.  This was a cheap marble that had tons of air bubbles inside the glass.  It also did not help matters that the marble had several dings in the outer surface. Perhaps if I had obtained a crystal ball to do my experiment, things would have turned out differently but I did not have the foresight to do so. Hindsight is always better.  A clear, flawless crystal would have allowed for sharp, reversed images. I did not achieve any sharp images, reversed or otherwise, with my silly marble. Still, one rather neat photograph was obtained.  I am now in possession of one incredibly nice closeup of a marble. 

 The few "unexplained" mishaps of photographs actually interest me far more than the clear shot.  The sunlight caused "orbs" to appear in several pictures.  This is not unusual in the least, yet, the iridescence created by the light seems almost surreal.  The hundreds of air bubbles in the marble bounced the light around enough to create tiny rainbows above the actual marble.  The marble was acting as a prism. These floating orbs were so brilliant that the camera caught their beauty. 

  Sometimes, we do not need a crystal ball to see our future. Sometimes, we know exactly what we will be doing years down the road.  Regardless of the time, I am quite certain that I shall be playing with some oddity that strikes my fancy.  The unusual, the rarity, the mysterious will always intrigue me.  In my way of thinking, more people should do more playing.  Discoveries of new things would never be made without a bit of curiosity and playtime.