All you can do is try….

I hate reading manuals.
But there’s no way around it this time.

I’m determined yet again, now that I have some semblance of time this month, to take up my lovely camera.

I bought a book on photography.  Another one. Well, my second one.

Probably not my last one.

Not a technical book this time.

More one that talks about being a good photographer.

And gets you thinking of why you want to photograph.

Which leads you eventually to what you want to photograph.

I haven’t come up with my grand statement of photography yet.  It probably has to do with why I want to write and draw.

 And why I’m so inarticulate in real life.

I know I like to photograph the people in my lives.

Candid as well as contrived.

I’d like to figure out a theme.

I have some ideas. Several.

I just need courage and patience to bring them into existence.

Some of them seem outright ridiculous right now.

But to borrow a quote from Einstein, from the book

“If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

 Albert Einstein

So here I am, prompted by this need to be able to tell a better story, thumbing through a manual to figure out the finer workings of my camera.

Which I should name. What’s a good name for a camera?

Something friendly and dependable.

Because this little camera’s going to play it’s part in helping me make sense of this life.

On that note, I’ll leave with my favorite quote so far from the book:

“For me, photography has become a way of attempting to make sense of the very strange world that I see around me. I don’t ever expect to achieve that understanding, but the fact that I am trying comforts me.”

 Michael Subotzky

And of course a few of my favorite pictures so far on my camera.  

Remembering I still don’t know how to use it.

Friends. Food.  Both. Pretty things. Random things.

I’ll learn to tell the story better.

For now, it’s enough for me that I’m trying.