Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Whacha doing?

Got me thinking
Me and this fellow got to be pretty good friends. I was standing by him on the Riverwalk shooting a shot down the river. He kept a pretty good eye on me the whole time. In fact, he would look at me with this eye, then he would turn his head and look at me with his other eye -- maybe he could see better out of that eye. More likely he wanted to make sure his right eye wasn't deceiving him -- there really was this silly looking fellow staring through a glass eye.

I made me think "what the heck am I really doing?" I've put up 214 posts since I started this adventure. I didn't have any really plan back then of what I wanted to accomplish. I was just swept up with the excitement of having an outlet for my glass eye.

A couple months into this, I would panic if I didn't have an idea of what I would shoot for tomorrow or the day after that. How would I keep interesting photos coming?

But now a little more than six months into this, I find the familiar feelings of my long ago newspaper days coming back. A certain confidence in making the deadline. I remember back then going halfway through the day with no idea of what our lead story would be -- this was a small town daily, so the lead had to be local. But I knew it would come, and I always had a bag of tricks if it didn't.

Not so easy was finding a front page picture that would jump out at you -- it wasn't so easy, because you couldn't do it by phone --- you couldn't call your friend in the courthouse and get a story idea over the phone. Worse, once you had the picture, you had to rush back and develop it and that took time. Better days we live in when digital makes things instantaneous.

I remember rushing back from a afternoon meeting a time or two, knowing we had no Page 1 photo -- without panicking, I would take a turn I didn't usually take and turn on my scouring eyes for that interesting shot. It would always come.

So it is, here. The panic of my early days in this has waned. Still I wonder if in losing that panic, I am also losing my edge. Accepting lesser quality shots.

So Mr. Seagull. You want to know what I'm doing here? I can't tell you, it's something you have to experience.

--steve buser


Lagniappe

The elephant got a little nosy. And that was okay with our grandson. Okay, it did take him a few seconds to decided if this was something he wanted to be part of.
Today on Pixel Eyed.

8 comments:

Kate said...

Perfect shot of a seagull! Altho they can be dirty little fellows, leaving their mark behind them, I've always been fascinated and love hearing their calls.

Gwen said...

Cute seagull photograph--sometimes these birds are so tame they're like pets, they're so used to human proximity.

NorthBayPhoto said...

Great shot of the gull.

Thanks for visiting my NorthBayPhoto blog. As for my golf photo from a few days ago, I too like to golf amongst the trees! And I really mean amongst the trees, thru the trees, under the trees!! The Osprey Golf Course front nine is the field links style, while the back nine is amongst the boreal forest and in my opinion much prettier to play (though I do lose a sleeve of balls every time!!).

WendyB said...

Great seagull shot!

Jules said...

Love the bird and I agree with your sentiments. I was sooo stressed with the phone lines and not being able to post and visit everyone and what photo would I post etc etc and then i realised that it is the motive behind your blog and the support we give each other that counts.

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

isn't it simply great: the photo-blogging community here....they do not hate you even on your worst days .......and i quite like your Mr. Seagull :)

Gwen said...

Happy Thanksgiving, blessings :)

Andree said...

I have two gull species. One from Vermont (yes, they are here on Lake Memphremagog) and one species from New Haven. I have identified one but not the other. And this is a third species. It's a great shot.

I like your words of wisdom for me here. I keep running low on photos and then feel the tiny edge of anxiety about it. But as you say, it always seems to work out.