dragonlady7 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragonlady7) wrote2020-01-09 03:16 pm
dragonlady7) wrote2020-01-09 03:16 pm
Entry tags:
sigh
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So part of the joy for me of going on vacations is taking photographs. It’s been more of a chore lately, I’m having trouble making myself take photos the way I used to as a teenager, but still, I love having them to look back on. Everyday life too, which is why I sometimes dutifully sling my camera around my neck and lug it all over the place and only sometimes remember to take the lens cap off and snap anything. The doing is less exciting than it used to be, the reviewing remains pleasant. (Though, the more I know about photography, the more resigned I am to the fact that I’m not actually, like, talented, but I know from all my hobbies that talent is basically zero percent of anything you actually do. There’s practice and skill but literally like 95% of any thing is actually fucking doing the thing, and that’s harder than you’d think.)
Anyway. It was hard to take photos in Iceland because 1) it was dark most of the time, 2) I was struggling with a sore hip for large portions of the walking around early in the trip, 3) it was bad weather and I didn’t dare get the good camera out, and finally 4) I spent literally half of our waking hours driving a car, which did not allow me to operate a camera.
The thing is, Dude took over Camera Duty, and that was sweet of him, but what that means is that with dead-eyed grimness he pointed his point-and-shoot through the window and literally nonstop took photographs. He does not particularly care for photography, and has occasionally taken fun documentation-style snapshots of things, but this is like. it was breathtaking scenery, which is worth photographing but judiciously, right? Like you’ve got to wait for a good angle, and set up a shot, and take a few snaps, check your light and framing, zoom in or out and change your settings, then try again, right?
No he just jammed his arm against the windshield and nonstop took photos.
I get that he was trying to make it up to me, that I wouldn’t get to do this thing I enjoyed because I had to drive the car, but now, guess what?
I have to spend hours going through the literal thousands of grim joyless photos he took and try to winnow out maybe half a dozen that are worthy as keepsake snapshots. They’re going to need color adjustment and probably judicious cropping to get the horizon horizontal, and there are going to be fifteen of any given subject, and most of them are going to have motion blur but you can’t tell that from a thumbnail so I’m going to have to load them all and look at them one by one.
So I get to spend hours being reminded that I didn’t get to take any of the artsy photos I wanted to take (in hopes of maybe printing and framing a few), while simultaneously wading through this well-intentioned monument to something he was miserable the whole time he was doing. like, that’s the other thing. Every single fucking time I, trapped in this small car in a hazardous circumstance it was taking a great deal of skill to navigate, pointed out some landscape feature and said “ooh look at that!” he interpreted it as a command to attempt to photograph it whether he felt he had the skill or opportunity or not. And I was like, “Dear, I am trying to have a conversation with you and enjoy this experience,” and he was like “I can’t get a good photo of that :( I’m a worthless person :(” and let me tell you that was far more exhausting than driving the fucking car through the fucking snowdrifts.
(Also I’d assumed he had looked up what to do if we spun out or went off a cliff or whatever, and only afterward discovered no, he had done no such thing and if we’d been in an accident I’d’ve had to try to figure it out. I had brought extreme cold weather emergency gear, but he had not, so it would definitely have been me trying to push the car. Listen kids, don’t ever trust a man no matter how many hours of research he says he’s done.)
Anyhow. I’m not like, mad, and it went the way it did and that’s fine, and we were there to have experiences not take photos, I just sort of wish his way of helping me hadn’t resulted in quite so much work for me. But that’s ok. We’re over it now and are going to just go on and do the work, because that is how we live in this world.
So part of the joy for me of going on vacations is taking photographs. It’s been more of a chore lately, I’m having trouble making myself take photos the way I used to as a teenager, but still, I love having them to look back on. Everyday life too, which is why I sometimes dutifully sling my camera around my neck and lug it all over the place and only sometimes remember to take the lens cap off and snap anything. The doing is less exciting than it used to be, the reviewing remains pleasant. (Though, the more I know about photography, the more resigned I am to the fact that I’m not actually, like, talented, but I know from all my hobbies that talent is basically zero percent of anything you actually do. There’s practice and skill but literally like 95% of any thing is actually fucking doing the thing, and that’s harder than you’d think.)
Anyway. It was hard to take photos in Iceland because 1) it was dark most of the time, 2) I was struggling with a sore hip for large portions of the walking around early in the trip, 3) it was bad weather and I didn’t dare get the good camera out, and finally 4) I spent literally half of our waking hours driving a car, which did not allow me to operate a camera.
The thing is, Dude took over Camera Duty, and that was sweet of him, but what that means is that with dead-eyed grimness he pointed his point-and-shoot through the window and literally nonstop took photographs. He does not particularly care for photography, and has occasionally taken fun documentation-style snapshots of things, but this is like. it was breathtaking scenery, which is worth photographing but judiciously, right? Like you’ve got to wait for a good angle, and set up a shot, and take a few snaps, check your light and framing, zoom in or out and change your settings, then try again, right?
No he just jammed his arm against the windshield and nonstop took photos.
I get that he was trying to make it up to me, that I wouldn’t get to do this thing I enjoyed because I had to drive the car, but now, guess what?
I have to spend hours going through the literal thousands of grim joyless photos he took and try to winnow out maybe half a dozen that are worthy as keepsake snapshots. They’re going to need color adjustment and probably judicious cropping to get the horizon horizontal, and there are going to be fifteen of any given subject, and most of them are going to have motion blur but you can’t tell that from a thumbnail so I’m going to have to load them all and look at them one by one.
So I get to spend hours being reminded that I didn’t get to take any of the artsy photos I wanted to take (in hopes of maybe printing and framing a few), while simultaneously wading through this well-intentioned monument to something he was miserable the whole time he was doing. like, that’s the other thing. Every single fucking time I, trapped in this small car in a hazardous circumstance it was taking a great deal of skill to navigate, pointed out some landscape feature and said “ooh look at that!” he interpreted it as a command to attempt to photograph it whether he felt he had the skill or opportunity or not. And I was like, “Dear, I am trying to have a conversation with you and enjoy this experience,” and he was like “I can’t get a good photo of that :( I’m a worthless person :(” and let me tell you that was far more exhausting than driving the fucking car through the fucking snowdrifts.
(Also I’d assumed he had looked up what to do if we spun out or went off a cliff or whatever, and only afterward discovered no, he had done no such thing and if we’d been in an accident I’d’ve had to try to figure it out. I had brought extreme cold weather emergency gear, but he had not, so it would definitely have been me trying to push the car. Listen kids, don’t ever trust a man no matter how many hours of research he says he’s done.)
Anyhow. I’m not like, mad, and it went the way it did and that’s fine, and we were there to have experiences not take photos, I just sort of wish his way of helping me hadn’t resulted in quite so much work for me. But that’s ok. We’re over it now and are going to just go on and do the work, because that is how we live in this world.