I walk and hike about Lackawanna State Park frequently all year. Most times I take a camera along because I never know what will ask to have its picture taken. Cameras are so advanced its hard to get a poor exposure or an out of focus shot so I work on framing, getting enough in the finished image to tell a story, express a thought or simply look pleasing. I’m fair at it but fair is good enough for me because if I like it that is all I need.
Digital cameras have made experimenting great fun for I can shoot any number of images then save the one that really is what I want and delete the rest. In the old days I practically needed a part time job just to buy film and have it processed. It was still fun but more limited than today.
One recent day I walked by the pool at the park and thought I saw a picture. The lifeguards chair at the pool, a pool still covered in snow framed by the iced over lake behind. There it stood, metal tubing supporting a plastic chair on a cold winters day the photo hardly measured properly showing the sunshine and all. It did not show the wind that made it very cold.
It was quiet that day, between wind gusts, but I thought how noisy it would be here in just a few months, the pool open, kids splashing, and moms yelling. We will have gone through spring and landed directly on summer and the lifeguards chair will no longer be empty, the lakes waters will be free, the trees green. This stand is really a sign of things to come when you think about it. All you need is a little imagination.
