Images of Our Lives

I went shopping for a microwave and bought a camera.  I also bought the microwave.

It’s red and matches my dishes, cups and crockpot.  The camera is black with a zoom lens of 42x, as the box tells me.

I’ve owned cameras before.  My Uncle Frank gave me a Polaroid as a gift just like the one Jim Garner used to hawk on TV.  Loved it when I was a teenager.  Then, in college I carted around a disc camera and eventually just used disposables.  An old girlfriend gave me a small digital camera a few years back but I packed it away and instead used the cameras on my phones.

The phone cameras have gotten better, but I decided living in the Mountain West I wanted to get serious about photography.  I don’t have a hobby, but find I like taking pictures.  The camera on the phone can take some nice shots and then it’s simple uploading them to Google+ and Facebook, however.  I’d like to see what I can do with a serious zoom that doesn’t compromise when it comes to resolution.  I’ve got too many mountain pictures that look washed out.

My brother had professional photography skills.  Before taking a job overseas, he had a knack for images of street life.  One day, my mother gave me a box of old film cameras.  Professional film cameras.  She explained they had belonged to Matt.  He telephoned me one day not long after she died and I explained I had his equipment.  “What cameras?” he asked.  He claimed they weren’t his and when he died six years ago I gave away the contents to a thrift shop.

Between us and a few hundred readers, if I was independently wealthy I’d become a photographer and travel the United States and Canada taking pictures.  Maybe it’s time for a GoFundMe account.