The Shots Not Taken
Aug. 1st, 2009 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI'm not the photographer in this family. Not that it stops me from occasional lame efforts with disposable cameras and cell phone shots, but Eleanor's the professional at that sort of thing. Other than a fancy-ass 35 mm camera my father let me have in college when I actually, briefly, was a professional fotog1, I've always stuck to what the much-missed electronics/housewares chain Lechmere's described in its ads as "PhD cameras."2
My eye is a bit better than my aim, though, and I can appreciate a good setup for a shot even if I have no capability whatsoever of getting a picture of one. That doesn't happen very often, but it happened twice in a 12-hour period, so since I can't Show You It, I'll use these words for a thousand-times-bigger rendition of each.
----
The first was in the garage last night. I'd just returned from bringing our neighbor home from her adventures, our dinner was grilling outside and otherwise being prepared inside, and I was rearranging assorted junk in the garage and the storage area above it- a cool bare-wooded set of eaves with a mostly serviceable floor that we always called "Teen Heaven" from the day we first saw it, thinking Emily and her friends would find it an awesome getaway-from-the-'rents kinda place.3. As I came down the fold-down set of stairs leading to that space, I saw an amazing spider web glistening in the late afternoon sun as it filtered through the back door into the garage. It was uniquely patterned, perfectly lit, and had its maker sitting gently in the middle awaiting her om nom noms. All that was missing was the phrase "SOME PIG." Unsure of whether to interrupt the chef to take the picture or make at least a quick effort with the iPhone, I started walking around it back toward the kitchen....
....and was just startled enough by something Eleanor was calling out at that very second that I jostled it. Moments later, all I could see, hanging maybe an inch below one of the steps, was Charlotte, surrounded by the remainder of her handiwork that she'd folded around her like a cocoon.
----
Then, this morning, after feeding the aminals and checking the morning pile of emails, posts and statuses, I headed back to bed. Usually, Michelle the cat is on me like a cheap suit within seconds, kneading the covers, purring up a storm, and generally mistaking me for her mommy. This time, though, no cat.
I looked into the hallway and saw her. Sitting on all fours on the threshold of the bathroom, her eyes as big as dinner plates, angled exactly upward at the fairly high bathroom window where, no doubt, a bird or critter was making her dream beyond her wildest dreams. Usually, when she's pulling this kind of quasi-hunting looking out the window over the bed, you can hear her making these pre-attack squeaky noises, but she was too far away to hear that. You could see her plenty fine, though, and for close to five minutes, she was just rapt with whatever was out there.
Getting up ever so slowly, I crept to my desk, grabbed the iPhone, unlocked it, set it to camera, said no to that gorram annoying "CAMERA WANTS TO USE YOUR CURRENT LOCATION ACCEPT DISMISS" prompt (does anyone know what that is and how to turn it the frick off?), pointed,....
and saw absolutely nothing. It was still too dark in that hallway for any of this amazing sight to register. I tried slinking to a light switch, but that was just too much action for this cat- it broke the spell and she was gone from the shot.
At least the words live on.
----
1 You laugh, having seen some of my pictures here. No, really. I was the only Syracuse Sub-Standard reporter for all of the county encircling Ithaca for more than a year, and if I wanted a pic to accompany my story, I had to take it. Even more rarely, they'd assign an event to me for which they needed a pic (anything important enough would have a Cornell Sun or Ithaca Journal fotog there and those could be grabbed off the AP wire if I fucked up). I'd bring the film to the Greyhound terminal and ship it under the bus to Syracuse. Uphill both ways. I think they paid an extra four bucks for every pic of mine they used. They maybe used a dozen in all that time.
2"Push here, Dummy."
3 In almost fifteen years, I think she's maybe been up there twice.
My eye is a bit better than my aim, though, and I can appreciate a good setup for a shot even if I have no capability whatsoever of getting a picture of one. That doesn't happen very often, but it happened twice in a 12-hour period, so since I can't Show You It, I'll use these words for a thousand-times-bigger rendition of each.
----
The first was in the garage last night. I'd just returned from bringing our neighbor home from her adventures, our dinner was grilling outside and otherwise being prepared inside, and I was rearranging assorted junk in the garage and the storage area above it- a cool bare-wooded set of eaves with a mostly serviceable floor that we always called "Teen Heaven" from the day we first saw it, thinking Emily and her friends would find it an awesome getaway-from-the-'rents kinda place.3. As I came down the fold-down set of stairs leading to that space, I saw an amazing spider web glistening in the late afternoon sun as it filtered through the back door into the garage. It was uniquely patterned, perfectly lit, and had its maker sitting gently in the middle awaiting her om nom noms. All that was missing was the phrase "SOME PIG." Unsure of whether to interrupt the chef to take the picture or make at least a quick effort with the iPhone, I started walking around it back toward the kitchen....
....and was just startled enough by something Eleanor was calling out at that very second that I jostled it. Moments later, all I could see, hanging maybe an inch below one of the steps, was Charlotte, surrounded by the remainder of her handiwork that she'd folded around her like a cocoon.
----
Then, this morning, after feeding the aminals and checking the morning pile of emails, posts and statuses, I headed back to bed. Usually, Michelle the cat is on me like a cheap suit within seconds, kneading the covers, purring up a storm, and generally mistaking me for her mommy. This time, though, no cat.
I looked into the hallway and saw her. Sitting on all fours on the threshold of the bathroom, her eyes as big as dinner plates, angled exactly upward at the fairly high bathroom window where, no doubt, a bird or critter was making her dream beyond her wildest dreams. Usually, when she's pulling this kind of quasi-hunting looking out the window over the bed, you can hear her making these pre-attack squeaky noises, but she was too far away to hear that. You could see her plenty fine, though, and for close to five minutes, she was just rapt with whatever was out there.
Getting up ever so slowly, I crept to my desk, grabbed the iPhone, unlocked it, set it to camera, said no to that gorram annoying "CAMERA WANTS TO USE YOUR CURRENT LOCATION ACCEPT DISMISS" prompt (does anyone know what that is and how to turn it the frick off?), pointed,....
and saw absolutely nothing. It was still too dark in that hallway for any of this amazing sight to register. I tried slinking to a light switch, but that was just too much action for this cat- it broke the spell and she was gone from the shot.
At least the words live on.
----
1 You laugh, having seen some of my pictures here. No, really. I was the only Syracuse Sub-Standard reporter for all of the county encircling Ithaca for more than a year, and if I wanted a pic to accompany my story, I had to take it. Even more rarely, they'd assign an event to me for which they needed a pic (anything important enough would have a Cornell Sun or Ithaca Journal fotog there and those could be grabbed off the AP wire if I fucked up). I'd bring the film to the Greyhound terminal and ship it under the bus to Syracuse. Uphill both ways. I think they paid an extra four bucks for every pic of mine they used. They maybe used a dozen in all that time.
2"Push here, Dummy."
3 In almost fifteen years, I think she's maybe been up there twice.
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Date: 2009-08-02 12:19 am (UTC)ロンドンやコペンハーゲンにも一緒に行くことあるし。
no subject
Date: 2009-08-02 12:21 am (UTC)