Pappy's Next Chapter: Snap a Photo Just for Fun

    Before anyone could point and click a digital camera that does all the focusing, light metering and shutter settings, I was playing around with film on a manual Fujica 35mm camera. I purchased it about the same time my first child was born, so I have a great number of baby and toddler pictures of her. My second-born has from time to time accused me of not having as many pictures of him. That may be true, but not for the implied reason that there was some sort of Tommy and Dickie Smothers thing going on ("Mom always liked you best."). I took pictures of bicyclists racing around Washington Park in Denver, sometimes holding the camera still and letting the cyclists blur and sometimes snapping the picture with the camera moving at the same speed as the riders and letting the background blur. I photographed my children splashing in the sprinkler, rolling down green, grassy hills, and tearing apart Christmas presents. I threw away many developed pictures that were too dark, too light, out of focus or just uninteresting.
    These days it seems everyone has a digital, 35mm, zoom lens, macro lens, automatic camera. I know I do. But I still enjoy trying to set up just the right conditions for the shot. I've learned much about lighting from my daughter-in-law and her father, a professional photographer. My son once described her family like this, "When everyone else is watching the sunset out over the ocean, this family is looking the other way." That's because they understand the importance of "good light" in a great photo. It's difficult for them to explain to me, as it seems to be more of an instinct than a learned ability. But I've been paying attention and I think I'm beginning to pick up on a few things.
    I've discovered that some people have a natural talent for setting up portrait-like shots, while others can capture an unspoken message in a beautiful landscape photo. I'm finding myself preferring the inanimate objects like old buildings, fences, leaves and dirt roads. So, I'm trying to learn more about my camera. It has 12 different settings just on one knob. Then there's the menu button and the array of quick set buttons. There's so much to learn about the camera that I haven't given much thought yet to learning about photography. So, I'm just playing around with it, having fun shooting anything and everything at all kinds of different settings. This is a luxury I didn't have when I had to pay for every roll of film and for the developing of each picture. And it's light years away from the Brownie box camera our family owned when I was a kid (all the images in the view finder were upside down!).

One set of objects I have found that interests me is signs; funny, strange or quirky signs. I discovered several on the road to my son's house. It seems the county requires every "road" (or driveway) over 500 feet long and shared by two or more property owners to have a sign. The owners get to choose the name, and some are fairly interesting.