A Visual Moment

I'm not very good with computer hardware. I've never been able to install a printer on my first (or even second) try. Scanners fail regularly in my presence. And I've been known to have problems with jump drives.

So when my dear friend C encouraged me to get a digital camera, I was skeptical. I can deal with dropping rolls of film off at the grocery store, but hooking up a camera to a computer and then downloading pictures seemed nearly impossible.

But I bought a beautiful camera and took it on my trip to England. Taking pictures there went well and I was able to download them after a couple aborted attempts. But then fright took over. My camera went into my purse and rarely came out. I took the occasional picture, but never downloaded them. They simply sat, in some arcane computer language, stored in my camera.

C would ask how my camera was working and I would say fine. But I was lying. I was afraid of the foolish thing and rarely touched it. Finally, I admitted the truth and she offered to help me learn.

You know what I learned? That taking pictures and downloading them is pretty darn simple. I can't believe I was so scared. So I took a bunch of photos and began cropping and manipulating them. (Although I am a wimp about computer hardware, I have no such fears about software.)

Here is the first picture I cropped after downloading.


And here is the original.


The original picture was a pine cone in grass, pretty enough, but nothing special. But by cropping out a very small portion of the picture, I've come to appreciate the little details. Delicate cracks and tiny chips mark the scales. And the highlights on the edges of the scales are contrasted by the dark shadows inside.

Life is busy, and it's not often that I remember to truly look as the world flashes by. But my camera allows me to pause the world for a bit and really learn to see each visual moment.