I have this vision:
long blades of prairie grass glowing in the twilight of late May, my own copper hair pressed against the pinkened sky, a splash of dark amid in the fullness of color.
{And trust me -- after a week of rain then two of sun, my backyard is most likely able to be listed as prairie.}
I've been mulling this capture all day -- today, this first day in a week or so since my camera has even emerged from the black confines of its bag, resting dormant under the weight of my
creative slump.
But today demands the camera in so many ways -- the boys sharing their first popsicles of the summer, two small sets of lips extending sticky kisses to their aunt.
And the assignment from
Creativity Boot Camp, with which I'm reemerging after taking time off right smack dab in the middle to put together the
Joplin auction, demands it, too.
We are to capture ourselves.
However we want.
There are no rules.
Only to know yourself just a bit more than what you did before you started by capturing her.
I click away almost an entire day's worth of sunlight and adventure before I turn the lens on myself.
It's after the children are in bed, hubby upstairs lulling them to sleep, that I sneak out the back door quietly and stand in the last bits of light.
Setting up the camera, adjusting the lens, setting the timer, I dash through nearly calf-high weeds and grasses toward the flowering tree near the edge of the yard.
Face toward the slightest blushes of the sky, I beam while the shutter snaps.
Click.Click.Click.Click.Click.
Dart back to the camera, sift through pictures that don't match the images in my mind, I begin to readjust the focus, reposition the camera, fix the light meter and accidentally set the camera off a few times.
Annnnd repeat the darting back to the tree and trying again several times until the last bit of light edges over the horizion and my body is but a shadow on the screen.
I return to the house, resign to embrace what I've captured even though I feel like my vision is more than a little deflated -- there are photos that showcase bits of me that don't really feel like me, that are kind of stiff and planned and the lines of my body don't really line up the way I'd like them to -- a primed and posed, under-the-spot-light me that doesn't really look like me at all is what I have to show.
Until I click a little further. And I find one of the accidental self portrait taken while gauging the fading sunlight and messing with the timer and light meter --
the capture taken where I wasn't planning or looking or paying attention -- rather just living, just being.
A lesson in self-expression that couldn't have come at a better time.
Because who I am when the spotlight fades is more me than who I am poised to be when I'm clearly in the focus -- primed and ready for shoot.
And the assignment becomes clear, like a lens being turned into a fine focus.
And I see it unblurred, for what it is instead of what I think it was supposed to be.
This actually turned out to be glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment this week, so I'm reposting it for today's link up.
If you had your own Bigger Picture Moment, link at
Melissa's today!
