When I arrive at my part-time job at the cheese/gourmet food shop a couple of days per week, I park in a crowded municipal parking lot behind an adjoining building. The store I work is located in a brick structure, across a small alley-way. On leaving the car, I cross the length of the asphalt, around a dumpster, to a tight area packed with the angled cars of shop owners who have permits to park closer to our building. At the brick-walled rear of the shop, I leap up the cement steps, pound on an industrial door and am swallowed inside for the next eight hours. By the time I leave, I’m hot and tired and rush out, anxious to climb into my car.
Recently though, I stepped out on one of those humid summer nights when a liquid sun angles on the horizon, and paused to gaze across the littered lot. It’s been a long time since I’ve paid attention to the back of the photographer’s studio, kitty-cornered from the dumpster across the way—a mistake I’ll try not to repeat. That night, I had my own camera in my bag. Pulling it out, I framed a close up, pretending that instead of a building at the edge of a downtown parking area, I’d captured the back of a sunny cottage, at the edge of a rural field.
It's funny the way a camera can make us really see.
