Thursday, September 23, 2010

A Haunting View

"You have the heart of a writer and the eye of a photographer," one of my long-ago newspaper editors once told me. "That's probably why you ended up in journalism."

I like to think that assessment is true. My love affair with words has been lifelong. Almost as soon as I could tip a pencil well enough to make it move, I've been writing words. But, I've been a shutterbug most of my life, too. I owned a few cameras as a kid and have a small collection of childhood snapshots to my credit.

My love of photography was furthered through young adulthood by my love for a photographer. He definitely had some positive influence in making me better at picture-taking. (Turns out I had the eye of, but not the heart of, said photographer.)

I think (or I like to think anyway) that I am a better writer than photographer and that pictures are just a dalliance, not the true love that words are to me. But sometimes there are images I would nearly give my soul in order to capture just the way I see them. There are times that the picture really IS worth a thousand words. Today was one of those times.

As I walked across the bus station lot this morning, I saw it: the fully waxing moon with a smoky strip of gray cloud before it. And to top it off, I caught the best view of it just through two branches on a young tree at the bus station! Talk about perfect framing. The moon was situated just so, too.

If only I had known that the bus had broken down and we had a 10-minute wait before a replacement would come for us. That would have been more than enough time to set up a tripod and try like hell to capture what my eyes saw. I soaked it all in as the scene began to disappear, the nearly full moon swallowed almost whole by dark clouds on one half of the sky just as the other half was beginning to lighten, clearing a path for the morning sun.

Bits of the moon played peek-a-boo in the sky as the bus trundled toward downtown, teasing me, haunting me. Making me wish I could telepathically transmit the image in my head to a nearby printer ... Sigh.

Such are the limitations of human beings.

2 comments:

Ty'sMommy said...

Fabulous. I just love those moments. Almost like it was a show put on, especially for you.

Why S? said...

I like to think I have a good eye but I don't have the patience or technical savvy to deal with equipment (as one who doesn't read instructions) so all I can or will do is point and shoot.

My husband, on the other hand, loves to take his time setting up everything and making all the adjustments. Which is fine when he does it on his own time. On vacation, it makes me want to scream.