How it is Now - IWSG November 2022.

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing and generous  Alex Cavanaugh. To find links to other monthly contributors, click here.  Thank you to November co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

The writing hasn’t been kind to me lately. Back in the day when I felt stuck, I took an artist’s date which I learned to do while completing the lessons in The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. The writer suggests taking regular time-outs from your "art" to pursue an activity that might spur creativity. For me, that usually involved going on a walk with a camera. I’d click images of scenes around the area I love so much, then go home and write about something I'd photographed. Once I wrote a vignette about a house blurred by fog and it ended up inspiring my third novel.

But because of life (and cell phones), I haven’t taken a walk with my actual camera in a long time. When I took it out of the cupboard recently, the last photo on the memory card was from 2019.

A few days later, I took a ride down to the harbor with the camera in the passenger seat, just to see how it felt. In truth, it felt weird. Who uses an actual camera now, anyway? But really the issue was something bigger. I didn’t grow up near the ocean. After almost 40 years of living by the sea, I’m still in awe of  my surroundings but as in every other realm of my life these days, there's something missing. 

Before two years ago, my walking habit was to keep my eyes open and frame picture after picture trying to capture the essence of what made me feel so joyful. These days though, what used to feel fun is hard work. Nevertheless, as flat as I felt that afternoon at the harbor, I was there. The egrets were, too. My heart wasn't in it much, but it gave me a little peace when I got home and downloaded the pictures to find my eyes still work.

A Second Chance

On Tuesday, I discovered our good, two-year-old Nikon D-40 is broken. A four-hour visit to the camera shop the next day suggested it may require a costly repair. “Costly” these days means, “Wait until the funds are in the bank account,” so I’m off for a second opinion today. For the moment we are down to one camera. Our daughter’s Cannon PowerShot takes a decent photo, if you know how to select the settings. I don’t.

Last night, before the sun went down, the wind shifted and the warm Jello air we slogged through all weekend disappeared. Earlier in the day my husband and I were sure we’d have to christen the second-hand air-conditioner we appropriated for our bedroom, but by nighttime, the breeze wafting through the open windows led to a cool change and an easy sleep.

The upshot of that meant I was up walking early this morning, having jumped out of bed to clear skies and a gut conviction that a perfect photo could be had on a day like today. Bolting out the door at 6:45, I grabbed the Cannon. My instinct was correct. Under a sun that still felt the brush of the treetops, a flock of white egrets stood knobby-kneed in the low-tide marsh across the road from where my favorite two boats are anchored. Hiding behind a bush and holding my breath, I waited until one elegant bird stood long enough to form his reflection on still water, then released the shutter. I caught another bird hunching its shoulders prior to cracking the surface with a needle-beak. He emerged shaking his head, with a silver minnow flapping.

Already delighted by the morning’s digital offerings, I rounded a corner where another stunning water view pans out. More egrets assembled there, long necks reaching and plucking at the mud flats in front of the sleek lines of a sixteen-foot wooden dory, a boat that wasn’t there last week. This time I crept through the long grass by the water, edging closer, taking picture after picture of the birds feeding in the foreground with the graceful boat bobbing behind; thrilled by this new subject—and the award-winning shots I was convinced would be the result. Ah, photography. It is almost as humbling as writing.

When I grabbed the camera earlier, I assumed the function button was set to “Auto.” Since I’m unfamiliar with how to change things, I left it that way. In spite of a growing compulsion to record my surroundings over the last few years, I’ve never taken a photography class. After today, my guess is that the first lesson would be to “check your equipment." I didn’t, and as I downloaded 27 pictures later this morning, all those beautiful birds appeared over-exposed, cut off, blurry or missing completely. The sloped necks and Ed Sullivan walks, the jerk-kneed tiptoes as they picked through the shallows, that clean new boat swinging behind them on a light breeze—none of it came out—a disappointment that brought me close to tears before offering up today’s Middle Passages exercise—

Take a seat at the computer Liza. Using the software located inside your brain, build language to describe the scenes in those failed pictures for your blog readers. Attempt to Photoshop these images from your real life into words.

Then idiot, locate the instruction book and learn how to use the damn camera.