Camera Readiness

Take a picture every day. Photography is like music, or anything else for that matter, if you don't do it everyday you're going to make stupid mistakes.

So just a few minutes ago, I'm looking out my front door, debating whether to go out on the porch and watch the rain. (Our rainforest weather is back!) I've got a mug of Earl Grey in one hand, I'm eating a banana in the other hand, and I'm pretty relaxed. Suddenly, the mail truck comes screaming down the down, pulls up to my box, drops off some mail. And she sails by every house that doesn't have a box on the side of the road. (In this neighborhood, many houses still have boxes attached to their houses.)

"Lazy mail people," I think to myself. I'm not a US Postal fan. I think FedEx and UPS should be allowed to deliver mail to houses so we can put those apathetic, good for nothing slackers out of business. But whatever. I have to just let that one go. But then, she does a 180 up the road, comes back down to drop off some mail across the street and drives up into my neighbor's yard. And I don't mean that she pulled up on the grass a little bit, she drove right into neighbor's front yard, down the driveway, and then went back the way she came -- like it was just a parking lot.

Now for whatever reason, she lingered in the yard a bit. I throw my banana onto the couch, the Earl Grey is set hastily atop of DVDs and video games, and I'm running into the office to get my camera.

After she drove off, I take a quick look at my pictures on the back of the camera. "Why are they so grainy?" ISO 6400, EV +7, and spot metering. When I'd last used the camera, I was doing some low-light experiments. I essentially missed the shot because I didn't set my camera back to some good defaults before storing it. If that had been real news, I'd be really sick to my stomach right now.

The shot is actually still usable, but although you can tell what she's doing, it's not as dramatic as when she first pull right into the lawn -- so it really doesn't matter anyway.

Interestingly, another across-the-street neighbor saw it too. She was waiting to talk to the mail person for whatever reason. I don't know what twist of fate brought two of us outside just when a postal person decided to "go postal." I don't think I'll bother to send the pictures to anyone, but maybe I should. Meh.

The opportunity here is a real-world reminder that my cameras need to be ready-to-go all the time. And usually, they are -- but now I'll make sure of it.

In other news, I was up all night working on prices (and maybe I watched some Daily Show). I'm just about there for the wedding prices. Dawn hopefully had a chance to look at my draft today; she's not home yet. I'll be glad to get it done, I'm letting everything fall by the wayside while I hyper-focus on this.