Not a good season for art

I like to think that I’m a photographer. (I also like to think that I’m skinny, brainy and the King of all the Trees. So whatever) I took classes in ‘the big city’ and have a real camera (digital, but digital SLR, so that entitles me to official camera snootiness.) with removable lenses and filters and accessories and I can talk about aperture and ISO and “depth of field” as though I actually know what any of that stuff means. And in past years I’ve won three, count ‘em THREE, ribbons in the photography exhibit at the county fair! (let us not focus on the fact that they were “honorable mention” ribbons which our photography judges give away like suger-free candy. They were ribbons. That’s all that truly matters.) For all these reasons and more I like to think that I am truly a photographer.

Also I really enjoy taking pictures. And I get all googly-eyed when I have a great photographic triumph like this or this or especially this – so cool! But as much as I like these pictures, that’s how much I hate flash pictures. I hate them. I hate how everyone always looks shocked and how the colors are sand-blasted and you just know that the picture right after the picture that was taken is of someone being very annoyed about the damned flash. Even I, who champions the rights of the shutterbug to click away all they want, have been known to say “enough with the flashes please!” at a busy party. Give me available light whenever possible.

Easy to say during the spring. During the Summer. Even during most of the fall. But man, when it’s winter it’s just really tricky to get good pictures. I don’t know how someone like Dooce does it – either there is always sun in her house, always, always, still and forever, or she has the best, biggest, most light-providing lens in creation, or her monthly lighting bill is astronomical. Regardless, I’m jealous. I want me some sunny days! Some artistically lit days!

We had sun on Sunday, and even though I was groggy from lack of sleep (oh, I haven’t covered that yet? I will, I promise) and unclean and everything I still dragged my heiny out to our bestest park and took pictures of the children of strangers. (the key to that? Every once in a while I smile and wave to an imaginary kid across the park. Presto: now I’m just someone’s Mom, taking their picture as a good mom should, rather than some creepy stranger stealing souls) Highlights of my picture day included watching a road-trip parrot being coaxed into pooping (bird poop stop – in case you thought it was a myth), the baby that kept falling, face-first and quite purposefully, into the sand box and then CRIED and CRIED, and the mass game of tag w/ players from age 11ish to probably college-age.

I got a couple of things I like, but within an hour the sun was fading and my hands were mostly just purple lobster claws from all the cold. So now what I think is I need a trip to the Bahamas, just me and my camera and the sun and the lack-of-cold, so I can take pictures of the children of strangers.