I fancy myself a photographer.  The truth is I own some cameras but have never truly mastered any of them.  Starting out in film "back in the day" I began on an old Kodak Instamatic followed by Kodak's version of a Polaroid camera to (at last) a true SLR: my trusty Pentax K1000; perhaps the best film camera to learn on.  For years I shot film until finally film got too expensive and rare to find and develop.  I guess I could have set up a dark room but remember I've never mastered photography. This is the truth: I'm just a "photo-tinkerer."  The '90's weren't good to me in terms of photography as relates to equipment.  Mostly point and shoot cameras were used to snap pictures of my kids.  I still have a brown paper bag full of rolls of film too expensive to develop now.  Sometimes I feel like a failure for not taking the time to develop all of that film.  But shooting a roll of film of my kids' birthdays and events and then another roll of film and still another; it all added up and now resides in a brown paper bag.  A sad way to end up. Finally, after the dull years of my photography I finally got more diligent about things.  I moved to digital SLR and bought a Nikon D40; a great starter camera but I quickly outgrew it.  I then moved on to a Nikon D90 and then to a Nikon D7000.  And that's it. That is where I have ended up.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my Nikon...a really great camera but I have yet to master it.  I'm a "novice" novice. What helps me in photography is that I have an "artistic eye" (I just made that up; no one has ever said anything of the sort about me). I often see things to photograph that might be unnoticed by others.  I'm not sure what the title would be for that.  Geek?  Nerd?  Weird?  Odd?  Amazing?  No title is actually needed.  It is what it is.  The photo above was taken behind the old Jefferson Hotel in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.  I simply like the look of black and white for this picture and the direction it takes my eye down the back alley.  Usually when I shoot photos I am undertaking the endeavor for myself and because of that I don't always have to master every shot to get the photo that I like.  And that, in and of itself, makes me happy.  Perhaps that is what happiness is...finding it in the moment without worry of what someone might think; just allowing the moment to be whatever it needs to be.  In that regard I don't have to be a great photographer; just a happy one.

One of those days...

Do you ever wake up and have "one of those days" that begins with "one of those mornings" that's more akin to a "morning meh?"  Okay that was wordy, but some mornings and days are simply difficult to put into words.  Some days I wake up like a "Spring chicken" (not usually) and other mornings I wake up with that hangover feeling without the requisite binge. Sometimes I live with what has been called "the tyranny of the oughts."  Henri Nouwen in his book, "Here and Now" sums it up quite nicely when he writes:  "It is hard to live in the present.  The past and the future keep harassing us.  The past with guilt, the future with worries.  So many things have happened in our lives about which we feel uneasy, regretful, angry, confused, or, at least, ambivalent. And all these feelings are often colored by guilt.  Guilt that says:  "You ought to have done something other than what you did; you ought to have said something other than what you said."  The 'oughts' keep us feeling guilty about the past and prevent us from being fully present to the moment."  Being present, truly present, with others in the moment is wonderful.  Celebrating life in the present moment is a great experience.  More important is being present with myself so that when "one of those days" arrives I can simply look at it and be about my day without the wave of "oughts" flooding in.  Nouwen writes further:  "The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.'  They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future.  But real life is in the here and now."  Here and now.  This is where I want to be.  One of those days? Sure, maybe...perhaps.  As I write this my ear is tuned to the sounds coming through the raised window open to the morning outside and I hear birds singing.  Life is present in the here and the now.  And for this I am grateful for I am reminded that there is a song in my own heart.  The journey of life is all about writing the song of the heart.  What song are you writing as you wake up to one of those days?