Look!

Here's my new favorite way to take pictures: I take my little Canon digital pocket camera, which a serious photographer would already turn up his nose at, and then shoot with the video mode, which is even worse quality than the "photo" setting. Then I just kind of wave that thing around in the general vicinity of what I'm interested in.

Later, I go through the little movie - which is never longer than 30 seconds, since that's all the camera will record at once - and look through each frame to find a favorite. That, the excerpted low-resolution image, is my picture.

These still frames usually look about like this:

Kinda blurry, kinda blown out, kinda bad. And I love 'em.

I think it's because I feel like I'm such an amateur
(a term that means "someone who does it just because he wants to," a wonderful fact I discovered only last week) that I figure the only way I'm likely to take a great picture is by dumb luck, and that's more or less where these come from.

I also like these pictures because they're surprises. Each frame I see as I work my way through the movie is a new discovery, a hidden miracle that was somehow captured in my little silver rectangular net. "Oh!" I say in my head. "Look!"

This, it has occurred to me once or twice, is my primary talent.

I'll take that. That's okay with me. I'm fine with being an attention-payer / moment-celebrator. Even if I'm not much of a photographer.

Now I just need to get better at stringing the images together, and figuring out how to make them tell a story.