“For me photography is to place head and heart and eye along the same line of sight. It’s a way of life.”
― Henri Cartier–Bresson
When I broke my wrist the doctor asked me what my two favorite hobbies were - gardening and photography, I answered. If she would have asked for three, cooking would have been on the list too. All of these answerers rest on the notion that I don’t consider my grandson Percy, a hobby.
Gardening is seasonal, coming to a halt in the winter months, when I am definitely ready for a break. Cooking also goes in cycles. I might go days without cooking anything exciting and then go on a cooking spree where I try something new and different for a several days in a row.
But photography is something I do almost daily. I have said often in these pages that my camera centers me, slows me down, helps with depression and soothes my soul. But if I am truthful here I must tell you that I have not truly left our home town in 2 1/2 years. Keeping ourselves safe was hight priority, we had a new grandchild, and my husband was having some heart issues. We, along with the world, hunkered down. And just when things started to look like we might start going places again, he gets scheduled for a pacemaker, and I break my wrist . . .
But here we are five weeks later, his pacemaker doing its thing, my cast coming off in a few hours, and him coming out of Covid, where thankfully he was not too sick, and for some crazy reason, I didn’t get.
So what does someone (say an amateur, mature woman, hobbyist photographer) do when she feels she might need to take this hobby up a notch? She calls another woman photographer who she can knock some ideas around with, and she comes away with a project. A project without too many rules or restrictions, a project that doesn’t center around one photography style of genre, but rather focuses more on getting her out of the house, out onto the streets, down to the water, into the woods, and hey, maybe even out of town.
All with her camera in tow.