Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Why point-'n-shoot is your friend when eyes dilated

On Monday I had an eye check-up and this meant the dreaded pupil expanding drops.
"Look at your feet as you walk," said my eye doc as I was leaving, "be careful, maybe take a cab, you won't see well for about an hour."

I clipped my shades to my busted eyeglass frames, pulled my coat hood over my eyes and headed West. The world was, indeed, blurry and light expanded and made everything look overexposed. I passed the Metropolitan Museum and thought, oh, sad, I can't see the art. And then I realized I really couldn't see any of it as the museum is closed Mondays. I carefully crossed the street and headed into Central Park.

I just love that moment when it still looks like winter until you look closer at the buds and crocuses beginning to dot the twigs and earth. The sky was a deep pure hue, no grays. It was cold, but not cold enough to kill the first sprigs.

But I couldn't see worth a damn. Blurry and overexposed eyes. Then I realized I had a point and shoot camera, as long as I could frame it, decide if all or only part of it should be in focus, then I could take shots and reasonably expect them to come out OK. And I did.


I recognized Pale Male, or was it his mate, regarding the baseball fields for scampering or flitting lunch morsels, I found a tree with red buds, a bush with yellow ones, and somehow, it was fine. Except that I couldn't tell when the hawk's face was in profile (yes, looks like a hawk) or not (could be a very large pigeon).

So, now I know I don't need to be able to see all that well to snap decent pix. As I get older, this may be good to know. Especially if I keep doing maps which are elected most likely to make me go blind from squinting and squiggling.

3 comments:

Deborah Atherton said...

There's something very ironic (as well as comforting) about being able to take good pictures without actually being able to see. There's some big metaphor in there about us all stumbling along through life with intermittent revelations - but it's Tuesday, I don't quite have a grip on it yet!

Unknown said...

Mister Picky says: Shouldn’t it be “point-’n’-shoot“ (or “point ‘n’ shoot”)? Please take care of your apostrophe friends.

Claudia Carlson said...

Dear Mister Picky, Your are, of course, correct however I was making the choice of picking the most common way of shortening "'n" and went with that. If you continue to point out your idea of missing apostrophe's I shall send the grammar goons to your site where they will break a few syllables. Although, deep in my humble mind, I realize you don't mangle the written language a bit and I may, ahem, occasionally fall short.