Snapshots

Day 50. Snapshots.

I've always liked taking pictures. Now with the electronic age, everyone takes pictures of everything. Mostly cats and food. I still prefer a regular camera with film, my trusty Nikon 35mm has been well used. I think the digital stuff makes it too easy to edit things that aren't perfect about a photo, and to me a photograph is a moment that can't be redone.

Some of my best pictures are of race cars. Some of my worst are of race cars. I have the particular talent of capturing the back half of one and the front half of another. Pace lap speed of 45 mph is apparently perfect for that. When they're going around the track at 180 mph, no problem. Slow them down, and I lose it. I can also perfectly center a B-1 bomber doing a flyover in a photo. Go figure. Another weird thing is my ability to capture the 24 car, even as much as I hate it. It photobombs the other cars.

I love capturing sunsets and storms, too. Something about that pinkish, purplish color at the end of the day. It's quite soothing somehow, winding down the day and capturing the last image before the light of day is gone. Storms are great fun, I love a good thunderstorm and the clouds whirling around before the rain hits. Dark clouds, dark moods. I've been known to stand outside just before a storm, taking pictures of the clouds as the lightning and thunder get closer.

I take a lot of pictures because I don't like being in them. I don't even take a lot of pictures of other people. I think I prefer things that don't wiggle, or blink, or wave off the shot because their hair might be out of place. Animal pics are great, but for every decent one I have taken there's at least ten that suck. They just won't be still.

I really don't like digital. I use my camera phone to take quick snapshots, but I rarely edit them. Maybe to crop the edges, but not to refine the subject. To me, photos are truly a snapshot of a moment. You don't get a "do over" in life, so why would you get one in a snapshot of life? So what if your eyes were closed? Who cares if you were looking off camera? It's about what was going on and the experience of it, not the actual look. You can't see the joy of someone holding a grandchild for the first time if they're posed and looking right at the camera and smiling. Take the picture as the nurse hands the baby over, and capture that moment.

I like to think of life as a series of snapshots. Hopefully when you lay them all on a table at the end, they look like a map of happiness and not a jigsaw puzzle.

Lesson Fifty: Do you enjoy taking or looking at photos more? Does the thought of having your picture takem make you feel all stabby? Think about the memories captured on film, or electronically, and revisit the good times through them. You never know what smiles you'll find looking through that box of old pictures hidden under the bed.

680 to go...