DO YOU TAKE MANY PHOTOS?

Say "Cheese."

OMG when I was working and raising a family, I was really, really  busy. I didn’t have an extra moment to look around me.  I was bound  and determined to save the world one student at a time and  also give my daughters everything they  wanted. I even tried  to cook a half decent meal for my husband each night.  I have to admit while I was grading   stacks of papers, doing mounds of laundry, running  kids here & there, peeling carrots, I never ever visualized myself doing some of the things I’m doing now.

Clipping coupons

Reading obituaries

Writing letters to the editor

Going on bus trips

Publishing poetry

Learning to crochet

Counting butterflies

Binge watching Netflix movies

Painting pine cones

Building birdhouses

Playing Scrabble

Feeding squirrels

Walking backward for exercise

And, most  of all, I’m shocked by my new obsession: taking photographs. I can assure you I never leave home without my cellphone just  in case there’s one more picture of an amazing flower  to capture.

 When we play golf, my poor husband gets tired of waiting for me to tee off , “Come on, Honey, get out of the woods.  You already have a hundred pictures of mushrooms!”

I even shocked myself the other day when I was excited about getting close enough to take a  cool picture of a dead mouse.  As I was focusing on its shiny innards, I thought of how I actually took an  F in my college biology lab because I wouldn’t get near that  gross creature with a l-o-n-g tail. Ewwwww.

And when I looked through my library of 16,000 photos recently, I realized  --   I have taken a lot of weird pictures!!!  I don’t even know what some of them are. Do you? Ha!

But you know some thing else I realized lately ~ I have a new way of looking at the world. I have time to appreciate different perspectives; to  see magic in simple moments.  I’m excited to find  lines and textures that connect us.  I search for beauty among the ugliness.

As American photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965) once said, “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”

Smile.

It’ll Be OK.

~~~

“The most annoying moment: when you take a selfie & your hair looks perfect, but your face looks terrible.” ~ whimsy soul

COMMENT: WHAT’S THE LAST PHOTO YOU TOOK?