spend a day taking photos of my city

To mark my last day of official day of freedom before the new semester starts I set aside a block of time to focus on this much cheered goal on my list. Arriving in the CBD my plans were nearly thwarted when I turned on my camera only to be greeted with the ominous message “Card Not Initialized”. Luckily a reformat of the card resolved the problem and I began to happily snap pictures of all those sights that I normally breeze by in a hurry to reach my destination.

At first I was concerned that I hadn’t put much effort into planning my excursion. But I quickly relaxed and decided to just wander and devote my attentions to what ever peeked my interest.

I often find huge sprawling cityscapes a challenge to photograph but today I viewed it as an opportunity to practice with my camera’s ample features. By the end of the day I felt I had developed an improved kinship with the many functions and I was intuitively adjusting the settings without much conscious thought. I still have much to learn but todays outing has evoked a new enthusiasm towards photography.

My vacation is quickly passing and my days have been filled with those urgent issues at the top of my task list. I once had a manager who was continually reminding me of the four quadrants of time management. Requirements on our time are either urgent or nonurgent. They are also priority versus nonpriority. So tasks can be any combination of these traits.

Most people tend to spend their time on urgent items regardless of the priority importance. Priority projects are often vital to our long term happiness and success but if they aren’t accompanied by a vital impending urgency they are passed over.

Improving my photography is a project I have long wished to accomplish. But my time is quickly consumed by school related deadlines, family obligations and the essentials associated with everyday life. This goal has been my most cheered for quite some time which adds to my internal sense of urgency and as the days of my vacation slip away I feel the criticality increase.

So today I marked a day on my calendar to focus on this task. My other commitments will simply have to be scheduled around this block of time.

My camera and I have ongoing holiday fling. When I am travelling we are practically inseparable but upon return to normalcy we inevitably go our seperate ways. When abroad where ever I go my camera is in tow. Not an easy task when travelling on chicken buses in Nicaragua, hiking up volcanos in Guatemala or scaling ruins in Cambodia. I know that leaving my camera behind in the hotel room is that one occasion when I will see a colourful procession marching through the streets or the light will be striking the facade of the town’s cathedral in the most dramatic of ways.

Like any romance travelling with my camera hasn’t always been good times. One camera and I had a lovers tiff when it decided to temporatily stop working in Laos after I clumsily allowed a bottle of water to leak its contents all over the inside of my backpack. Then of course there was the time I was abandoned on a roadside in Guatemala after my camera was stolen on a minibus trip. But in general I have learned that the surest key to capturing the moments that will later trigger poingnant memories is to carry my camera everywhere and to always have an extra set of charged batteries on hand.

Last Christmas I received a Fuji S5600 as a present which was a significant step up the technical ladder. So many more buttons and menu options to acquaint myself with. During my trip to Guatemala in January I spent hours wandering the streets, experimenting with the aperture, shutter speed, and iso. All functions previously unavailable to me with my previous less technical models. There was always another stone walled alleyway, another stately church or another vivid flower that offered an opportunity to cultivate my newly developing skills.

But since my return to prosaic academic life, my camera has been hidden in the cupboard accumulating the proverbial dust. It has made brief appearances when I I have taken the occasional snapshot of friends. But it has been months since I played with the aperture to adjust the depth of field or in actuality taken any photo not on the auto setting. So often as I am walking along the river or passing by a park I will be struck with photographic inspiration but naturally I am without camera. In the coming weeks I am hoping to not only reacquaint myself with those burgeoning skills I was briefly developing but this goal also pairs nicely with my intent to ‘Tour My City Like a Tourist’