Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Good News/Bad News

I have some severe limitations as a photographer. I don't photograph people -- too scary, makes me too nervous, and I once dropped my camera I was so shaky! And I don't seem to be able to recognize and capture the "big picture." Rarely do I take landscape images, overviews, street scenes, etc. I don't notice them, they don't excite me, and my results are simply average. That's the bad news.

The good news is that I have an eye for detail. I notice and take pleasure in finding small things, ordinary things, trivial things, and turning them into little jewels for display. I can take a wallpaper brush and make something of it. I can take a package of colorful toothbrushes and make bold and colorful images. I can even photograph the plastic top to a blender and make it look good. So it's no surprise that on a trip to Boston, on a street lined with skyscrapers, I noticed this tiny frog that was incorporated into the architecture at the base of a tall building. It's a cute and simple shot, has good lines, good patterns of light and shadow, and is kind of different. But do I have photos of the building? Of the street? Overviews of the scene? Of course not . . . Heavy sigh . . . ©Carol Leigh