Anatomical Amazement

One of the things I've been doing on this trip is learning a bit about photography. I had never before taken a class or anything like that - all I could do was point a little digital camera (or cell phone) at something and push a button and voila! There you have a photograph!

But with the knowledge that I would be alone for most of my trip and there would be no one there to snap shots of me holding up the tower of Pisa (yes, I confess to such levels of cheesiness, but really, you kind of have to do it) I decided to focus on taking beautiful pictures of non-human subjects. And for that, I reasoned, I would need a better camera.

So I've been running around with an intro-level dSLR in my purse, trying to grow into it and make the most of it, and having a grand old time in the process.

A side effect of my new hobby is a heightened appreciation of photography in general. Now that I've tried to do it, I get how much work and knowledge goes into getting some of those great shots I've looked at in the past and thought "that's nice". Note that I'm not professing some sort of great technical or artistic understanding of photography here, just that by trying to do it myself I appreciate it so much more.

Another result of trying to take better photos is an appreciation of human anatomy. I can look at something incredibly beautiful that just takes my breath away, but when I take a photo it just won't look the way I see it. I took dozens and dozens of photos with varying settings trying to capture the slanting sunlight through the trees in the evening that was illuminating (almost to the point of making them sparkle) hundreds of tiny flies. Now, I have seen things like that presented on film before. I know it's possible to capture it adequately with a camera. But my relatively sophisticated (for a complete amateur like me) lens etc. was still having trouble with it.

It may sound like I'm complaining about the failings of my camera here - I assure you I'm not. I fully know it's my inability to use it properly that leads to these difficulties. What I really want to point out is how effing amazing it is what we can see, and how quickly we see it. Our eyes and our brains are so perfectly evolved to convert the world around us to images, essentially changing settings automatically so we can see in different amounts and types of light. This, to me, is incredible.

So, I conclude, to have a broader and deeper appreciation of the world both around and (sometimes) within you, you have to try new things! Or, as Ms. Frizzle says, "take chances, get messy, make mistakes!"