Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man

Today has been a good day. Did some weeding, some watering, Facetime’d with my mom, a trip to Costco with my husband, and was able to just sit and read one of the books I’m in the middle of at the moment (Bernie Sanders’ latest, Where We Go from Here).

Then there was the photography.

One of my son’s is taking a photography class at school. He has rented a 35mm Canon Rebel (Canon is the best btw) from school, and they are learning to use their phone camera better as well.

This morning he let me know he had an assignment due and he needed to go to the park for pictures. Now I pretty much plan out my weekend days because they go so quickly. My first reaction in my head was, what wasn’t I going to be able to achieve of my personal list to get him to the park? My second thought was why had he waited until the last moment to say he had to go. The first thought I kept to myself, the second I did ask him in the future to not wait until the last moment to say he had an assignment as the weekends can be pretty full.

Regardless, we finally had time late afternoon to go to Washington Township Park. It is a pretty good park. Can’t wait until the changing of the leaves to go back when it will be ablaze of color.

The assignment was emphasis. I asked what that meant in terms of the expectation of the teacher. He said the photo needed to include something of color that stood out from the background. Since he’d already been to the park before with friends, he let me know where to park and which trail to take.

Along the trails we crossed some streams, saw a couple of what appear to be old Native American huts of different types, and lots of green flora. He asked about how to use various features on his camera, which made me have to think through ISO, f/stop and depth of field. We also discussed how to make the camera focus on an object, then move the camera while keeping the focus on the same object, but keeping with the rule of thirds.

I had a good time with him and remembering how much I enjoy photography—if there was money in photography as an art form still, I’d enjoy it as a career. From what I could tell, I think he had a good time too. Hopefully I was also able to help him learn a few new things and different ways to frame a photo.

Here are a couple of the photos I took on my iPhone since I’ve not uploaded the ones from my Canon yet.

Hope you enjoy them.

—All images are my own and copyrighted to me.