Photography

I took a short photography workshop today. A group of about 15 people met at a nature reserve and got tutored in f-stops, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. I've taken photographs for most of my life, but the vast majority of those were with a film camera and now I have a digital camera, so I need to learn a new mindset.

I don't know how many times that's happened to me in my lifetime but I'm sure the number is high. No matter how much I want things to stay the way that I'm familiar and comfortable with, the more they seem to change.

Not all the changes are bad: I don't have to wind the camera after every shot and I don't have to worry about wasting film. I like that! However, I have to figure out what all of those buttons on the camera are for. The workshop today helped me make a lot of progress on that.

I think my favorite part, though, was when we went outside to try out what we'd learned. The day was overcast and most of the autumn colors are gone, so some people would have despaired. There's nothing worth taking photos of, they would think. Fortunately, I was with a group of people who knew better. If you'd stumbled upon us, you would have seen one person taking a photo of a tree trunk, one of a cluster of red berries against the brown, one of the pattern on the water, one of a rooster who came to check us out. I took a moment to appreciate their attitude: there's plenty to see out there if you actually look for it.

And I think it's the same with writing. Every week I sit in front of this computer and think there is no way I can write a blog that day because nothing has happened to me lately and I don't have anything to say. But then I remember: if I'd felt that way about 24 years ago, I would never have written my first novel. I wasn't sure if I had something worth writing, but I tried anyway. (I'd done it before with very awful results. Thank goodness it came out better this time!) The point is that I tried. I looked until I found something.

Keep looking.