Revelation

My kids are awesome, but I wanted to veer in a different direction for just a moment.  (Feel free to skip to the bottom to bypass my medication-induced rantings and hear more about them.)

I was driving up in the "country" today (defined as 8 miles outside of city limits).  It was right at the butt-crack of 6:30am, and I was alone.  Singing along to angsty feminist music and enjoying the hazy morning by myself, I had a few revelations. 

First of all, North Idaho is beautiful.  It really is, especially in the summer (which must be getting close). This is the second time in the last week that I have had this thought, which is immediately followed by why don't I have my camera? 

About three and a half years ago, I spent $900 on a be-A-utiful DSLR, hell-bent on being a photographer.  I spent three years in college holed up in the darkroom before defecting to politics in protest of the growing influence of the digital world.  To me, the photograph born of winding film, bracketing exposures, splashing around in corrosive chemicals and adjusting my eyesight near permanently to amber light sources is so must more intrinsically valuable and beautiful than the one created by clicking a few buttons.  ...but I digress (yet again).  I am coming around; I haven't spent any length of time in a darkroom in years.  As much as that pains me, it is true.  Anyway, I bought a great digital camera, set my tank-of-a-film-camera on the shelf, and after a year of not knowing what the hell this or that button does, I bought a digital point-n-shoot.  I need to get to know my fancy-pants camera better.  I need to bring it with me wherever I go.  I need to become better acquainted with digital editing (and to stop thinking of it as "cheating").  Altering my attitude toward something about which I have been passionate about since my dad handed me that Pentax K1000 and showed me around his makeshift (the kitchen counter and sink in the dark of night) darkroom when I was 13 is not an easy task.

(Also not an easy task: gardening.  Especially for me.  One sideways glance at a plant, and it dies like the Wicked Witch of the West.  But I want to learn so badly!!)

Whatever.  (Yeah, I said it!)  Everybody and their brother thinks that if they have a camera and know how to jack up the contrast in Photoshop, they can market themselves as a portrait photographer.  Get your heads out of asses.  Come on; please.  That's not what I'm trying to do.  I have no problem paying a professional to take pictures of my family all dressed up  But I can use my camera, and I can document our everyday life with pretty pictures.  And, as long as we have to live in North Idaho (grr...), my camera can help me enjoy how pretty it really is.

Did I mention my kids are awesome?  We went to the park today.  Aurelia rocked the slides like a boss, and Thad chilled in the bucket swing like a gangster; he did not enjoy motion.