That would be me.
Very sad.
I was about three blocks from the Flat Tire Command Center getting ready to take some awesome pictures and I look through the viewfinder and what do I see?
WTF?
Everything's like all topsy turvy!
What exactly is turvy anyways?
Is it really a word?
If it isn't it sure sounds like what I saw.
Okay, something is very wrong here in cameraland.
So I take off the lens and voila!
The mirror in the camera had come all undun!
One more time, for emphasis.
WTF?
Boy, it felt like an old friend had just died.
Okay, not really.
I've only had this camera for a couple of months and let's face it, it's probably over thirty years old.
I mean it's not like I just got it fresh out of the box.
Still I was a bit down.
Then I thought: wait!
This means I get to go and buy another camera!
Oh yeah baby!
So I put the broken mirror FE2 on the side and grabbed my back up FE2 and headed out the door, back to my original mission.
Which was to take some images of the this fountain I shot on Halloween:
Not a very exciting fountain but I thought I could dress it up by taking some longer exposures:
That didn't really work.
Which sort of dampened my mood for the evening.
I mean I just lost a camera and here I was mile(s) from home with bad pictures of water.
So I went and got something to eat:
Claimed to have world famous burgers but I wasn't in a burger mood, morning a loss and all, so all I had was a bacon dog:
Which was only okay so I was even more melancholy.
I was going to walk into the concrete jungle, I was right at the entrance to Waikiki, but it was getting late so I decided to head on home.
It turned out to be the long way home.
Via the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor:
Another of my old hangouts as back in another life I spent quit a bit of time wandering around here.
Actually back in another other life I also spent a lot of time here hanging out with cold beverages and high school classmates.
I'd been to the yacht harbor before looking for a composition, but have always come away with nothing special.
In fact I was just there a couple of weeks back during the day and I don't think I even bothered to take a picture in anger.
Well last night, it started off windy but by the time I got there it was late and the wind was non existent:
I'm beginning to realize, no scratch that, I've always told the kids that photography is about seeing things.
Seeing things you never saw before or seeing things differently.
I see compositions whether I'm looking through a camera or not but once I see something through the viewfinder it becomes something else.
Now that image above, I must have seen a thousand times, but it took last night for me to really see it.
Making any sense?
I've always appreciated the beauty of the yacht harbor, all the boats and lights and such, but seeing it through a camera, and seeing it as a picture it becomes something different:
Technically not my best images so I'll go back and try again, but good enough, the images I mean, to make me take a second, third and fourth look at what I thought was a familiar place.
Still not making sense?
I'm looking at those pictures and while it's familiar I'm having a hard time putting the images to the place.
Sort of like it's all brand new:
Maybe it was because I was thinking of my broken camera, or maybe it was the stillness of the night, or maybe it was that bacon hotdog, but I came away from there with a whole new perspective on photography and the power it holds.
While it may not change anything for the audience, the folks that look at the pictures although I hope it does, photography has managed to change me in some little way.
I mean taking pictures has always been about well, taking pictures, making some art and seeing things differently.
I've never thought about the deeper resonances it creates.
I suppose I could swing this whole thing around and say that it's like looking into a mirror and being not quite sure who you're looking at, but it's not that deep and I'm not that good of a writer.
I suppose though that it does have something to do with what you see and how you reflect on it.
Get it?
Reflections? mirrors? mirrors reflect?
Nevermind.
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