Shoot me!

No don’t worry I have not fallen off the wagon so far as to wish harm to myself – I'm sure there are plenty of other people with better aim that can hold down that job. I am referring to the fine art of photography and my genuine lack of skill in the same subject. I have always had an interest in trying to record images for posterity, but the problem is, even if I get a great shot, I shoot 40 bad pictures along with it, and I’ll never find the good one again.

Thank goodness for the advent of digital cameras. I always felt kind of guilty going to the store to develop literally dozens of horrid photos which at the time were costing close to 30 cents each to process. My wife was tolerant because usually we would get a couple of ‘album worthy’ pictures of the kid for the trouble. Now with digital, I may take hundreds of pictures and guess what – still only a couple are decent? The real irritation now is, though I don’t waste money printing pictures I don’t want, it still feels wrong to delete bad digital prints because it feels like I am deleting memories too? Regardless of format, good shots or not, it all just gets filed away on some hard drive or dumped in a memory box somewhere anyway.

I always thought it would be easier with film and then later video tape. But no, I have had the same problem as I will record endless amounts of data but have no concept of what is on various tapes and how to organize all that stuff. Oh yes, I know I still pan too quickly, the audio is atrocious, and the lighting is bad but that’s ok because I admit it, I’m a rank amateur ( as opposed to a good smelling professional).

So eventually when I stop blowing into straws to make milk bubbles, and start blowing in them to drive a wheelchair around, I hopefully will find some time to organize all of these images. By then, if I’m lucky, I might have a service monkey to help me sort through the endless boxes of memorabilia, or at least pick out my ties, fleas, and bellybutton lint. Oh wait I forgot, I had a kid quite awhile back. That means, if I time things just right, by then my daughter may let me borrow her ‘disobedient chimp’ to help old ‘Grumpy Grampy’ organize photos. But of course I will need to capture ‘THAT’ moment too on film so naturally it will lead to even more crates of disorganized pictures … you know what I've changed my mind – go ahead ... JUST SHOOT ME!