It’s sort of hard for me to believe, but another entire week has gone by without taking a picture of anything. I know for a lot of people, that’s pretty much the norm—only taking photos at special events and such—but I don’t want to be that. I want to snap pictures of daily life, whatever and whenever strikes my fancy. But even though I usually have my camera with me (and always have my phone with me), I rarely seem to take pictures these days. Certainly it’s a function of time and energy; I’m always either doing something, or preparing to do something, or crashing into a stupor from pure exhaustion. Still, what kind of fun is that?
So, even though I failed miserably at this month’s photo a day challenge, I’ve downloaded the July list, and hope to be at least a little more successful this time around. We’ll see.
But, while I was reminiscing this past week about the whole STAR saga, I was also browsing through some old photos. I logged into my SmugMug account to look at the Hollywood pictures, but took a couple of minutes to look over some of my other galleries too. (As a quick aside, if you’re looking for a good online hosting site for your photos, SmugMug gets my vote for sure: easy to use, nice features, and unlimited storage, all at a very reasonable price. And, no, I don’t get anything for that little blurb, either, just an honest opinion of a service I enjoy.)
Anyway, I was looking at some of my pictures, including an album from a trip we took to Minnesota three or four years ago. There are a lot of scenery pictures—some of them pretty decent, if I do say so myself—and even some family photos, but the one that jumped out at me was something silly. We were just driving around town in Duluth and seeing what there was to see, and I was snapping a few pictures here and there. Of course, photos snapped from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle typically don’t turn out all that great—and this one’s not really an exception to that rule—but they often capture simple moments that would otherwise be forgotten in the midst of all the “real” things that were seen along the way.
So it is with this quick shot that caught my attention when I saw it in real life, and has brought back the moment each time I’ve looked at the picture. There was just something about this pensive face, looking out the window of a rundown building, watching to see what was going on in the world outside. I wondered what he was thinking about, if he would rather have been outside chasing our passing car, if he knew we were strangers in his town, if he preferred that upstairs vantage point to something on the first floor or that’s just where he happened to be. Maybe he was waiting for his owner to come home; that would explain why he barely moved when we drove by; he would know the car he was waiting to see. Maybe when that particular car pulls onto the street, the pensive face takes on a whole new expression and the eyes light up while the tail starts wagging and he runs from the window, bounding joyfully down the steps to greet his owner at the door. I like to think that’s what happens, but even if it does, I still wonder what he thinks about until that special car pulls into view, and what sorts of things has he seen from his upstairs perch.
Do you have simple snapshots that capture your imagination? What stories do they tell you?
