Snapshots in My Memory

It used to be a photographer’s worst nightmare, back before everyone carried a cell phone and every cell phone included a camera. That perfect, once-in-a-lifetime picture looms before you—and you’ve left your camera at home.

The first time this happened to me, I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. My parents had given me their old Brownie box camera (Anyone else remember these?), and I’d taken some pictures I’m proud of to this day. But this particular day my camera was sitting at home on a shelf.

The spring had been, not unlike most Illinois springs, rather erratic, with cold temperatures giving way to warm temperatures in early March, then reverting to cold temperatures and snow flurries later in the month. As I was walking home from school, I passed an ancient tree with gnarled roots radiating in all directions. The wind suddenly picked up and whirled a mix of snow and brown leaves out from between two of them to reveal, hidden among the remaining leaves and snow, a small clump of violets in bloom.

I could do nothing but try to remember it—like a snapshot in my memory.

Several years later, I was in a car with my parents, riding through the countryside between Flora and Olney in Southern Illinois, and there was the perfect sliver of a moon high in the sky long before sunset, like a fleck of gold floating in a turquoise eye—a snapshot in my memory.

Nearly grown, I was on horseback in the Fox River bottoms near Olney. It’s a wild area. Parts of it look like humankind has never walked there. But most of it is laced with trails like the one I rode this warm autumn day, and small pockets of crops are planted in open places to take advantage of the rich, loamy soil. I was riding past one of these when a red-winged blackbird glided down onto a full, golden head of wheat and balanced there, wings outstretched, for long seconds—a snapshot in my memory.

When I was a young mother living in the Kiamichi Mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma, I woke one night to find my bedroom glowing with silvery light. I rolled over and peeked out the window to find a full moon high in a sky covered with puffy clouds that looked like lily pads. They were reflecting the moon’s light so completely that the dirt road leading to our house looked like a stream of molten silver—a snapshot in my memory.

I was visiting my sister on the plains of Nebraska one summer when her husband called from the airbase to tell us to go to shelter because a severe storm was on the way. As we left her mobile home, I looked across the prairie to see a perfect anvil-shaped cloud preceding the storm front, grumbling thunder and dropping bolts of lightning as it approached—a snapshot in my memory.

My kids grew up in a little town south of Champaign, Illinois. I used to take evening walks past a small, picturesque grove. One evening, mist curled around the trunks of the trees and the air was filled with fireflies. Crouched in the mist, surrounded by fireflies, was a wild rabbit—still as death and poised to flee—a snapshot in my memory.

I’ve seen double and triple rainbows—even an upside-down rainbow once. I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen sundogs and “the new moon hanging from a star,” and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen comets that swept the sky—one with a double tail—and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen brilliant sunsets, fiery dawns, bursts of lightning in pink and green that came down from the clouds and up from the earth and met in the middle—and I didn’t have my camera.

All just snapshots in my memory--until now. Now you have those snapshots, too.

Surprised by Art

I started taking photographs with an honest-to-goodness Brownie box camera (Anyone else old enough to remember those?) that belonged to my parents when I was about 10 years old. Got some pretty good shots with it, too.

But I didn’t really take photography seriously until went back to college when I was in my thirties. I was required to take photography in order to earn my journalism degree. When I was introduced to the 35mm SLR Minolta, I fell in love.

I think part of the reason I love photography so much is because I’m such a control freak, and photography forces me to let go of some of that. Yes, you can control most of the results from studio photography, but the kind of photography I like is taking the camera on walks around the neighborhood, drives through town, vacations across the country or even across the ocean where you never know what you might see, what the lighting will be, or how fast your subject might be moving. It’s part art, part technical knowledge, and part treasure hunt. And sometimes it’s just dumb luck.

I remember seeing a wonderful photo of a fence line that glowed golden against a twilight sky and reading that the photographer had gone out to take a picture of the sunset. For some reason, she turned around and there behind her was the sun bouncing off the fence posts. Dumb luck.

One of my favorite shots of my own was even more dumb luck than that. In fact, it was a complete surprise. I didn’t even have a good camera with me—just a digital point-and-shoot I could stick in the pocket of my jacket. Hubby and I were on a tour of Yellowstone Park, and the guide had taken us to a river in a nearby town. I was standing on a bridge watching ducks and seagulls swimming below when one of the gulls took off. I panned, trying to get a shot of it in the air with its wings outspread, but the little dickens turned directly toward me. In panic, I tripped the shutter.

Later, when I checked the shots I’d gotten that day, I came thiiiis close to deleting it. Even on the small screen of the camera, I could see it was so blurred it was hardly recognizable as a bird. But something about the colors made me keep it.  

When I got home and put it up on my Mac I found this surprise:

To me, this photo has a beautiful abstract quality that I couldn’t have achieved if I’d been trying. Dumb luck.

If you’d like to see more of my photography, the rest of it much less surprising, check my foto blog at http://www.thrumyeyes-angelaparsonmyers.blogspot.com or click on the "thru my eyes" link on the left. I try to add a shot a day.

Popularity and Basketball Stars

I don’t think I’ve ever been popular.  But if I had been, I wouldn’t have noticed it, because I walk around with my head in my own little world most of the time, thinking about the last book I read or plotting the next one I plan to write. I liked being a nondescript person in a nondescript world who lurks around the edges of the crowd and just observes everything that’s going on.

That worked well for me, and I spent many years doing it. Then I became a journalist who specialized in feature stories about ordinary people with extraordinary hobbies or experiences. My observations grew into a file box stuffed with stories that had been published in the Central Illinois newspaper where I worked. I had a brush with popularity as readers began to recognize my name. It was unnerving, and I didn’t really I like it.

But it helped qualify me for a job at a Fortune 500 corporation that allowed me to write stories about some extraordinary people with extraordinary jobs or experiences, but stay mostly anonymous. I was known only by my publications, so I could still lurk around the edge of the crowd and observe most of the time. This worked especially well when I was photographing events for my stories, because I was able to get great candid shots. And it was photographing one of those events that taught me a very important lesson about popularity.

I don’t remember where the actual division photographer was that day, but about mid-morning I got a nearly frantic call from the human resources manager. Karl Malone was a huge heavy equipment fan, and he was coming to visit the plant to see how it was made. The entire management team wanted pictures.

For those of you too young to remember Karl Malone or, like me, sports illiterate, he was the second-highest scorer in basketball after Michael Jordan, and held the record for the most free throws attempted and made. They called him “The Mailman” because he always delivered—for the Utah Jazz most of his career in the NBA.

So I walked into a visitors’ center packed with upper management frantic to be sure they had their photo taken with Karl Malone. They were milling around, jostling for position, introducing themselves and explaining their responsibilities in the corporation. So I just stood back and started taking candid shots.

Malone shook the hand of the division vice president and had starting greeting the department heads when he just stopped—and looked directly at me. He left the group of dignitaries and walked over to me, holding out his hand.

Now, if you’ve never stood next to a professional basketball player, you cannot imagine how impressive one can be. Granted, I am barely over five feet tall and accustomed to dancing with my head on the chest of my partner instead of cheek-to-cheek.  But if I had danced with Karl Malone, my face would have barely reached his diaphragm—which appeared to be rock hard under his golf shirt. The breadth of his shoulders was at least half my height, and his biceps could have been as big around as my thighs. I had to reach waaaaaaay up to shake his hand, and mine disappeared into his. No wonder those guys can pick up a basketball in one paw. He asked my name and what my job was, and surprisingly, I remembered. Then we lined up the management team like school children waiting for recess and snapped their photos one by one.

I followed Malone and his tour guide around the rest of the day, continuing to take photos for the division newspaper, and I saw him greet several others like he had me—leaving the group of  “important” men to approach two women who worked on the assembly line, stopping to speak to a welder, asking one of the test drivers to ride with him while he drove a piece of heavy equipment. Karl Malone was a popular man when he arrived because he was a rich and famous athlete. But by the time he left, he was popular for an entirely different and much better reason.

He was a class act.

Growing Wild

House plants and I don't have a good relationship. I'm one of the few people I've heard of who can kill a philodendron while trying to nurture it. 

On the other hand, outdoor plants seem to thrive under my neglect. Wild strawberries and violets covered the ground under the old mailbox this spring. A resurrection lily, mowed down repeatedly last year, popped up next to a pile of rock this summer, blooming as if carefully tended.


So my response to plants might be a little peculiar. Trees have always seemed to me to be almost sentient, like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, and I always feel like they're trying to tell me something terribly important--I just can't understand the language of the wind in the leaves.

You might recognize the photo above as the background of my blog. I love it because not only do I feel like the trees are alive, but I feel like woods fairies could be peeking out from behind the ferns, giggling at my clumsiness and inability to hear the earth speaking to me. The photo to the left was taken in the same area, Reelig Glen in the Highlands of Scotland, and shows a little more of the play of light through the mist and leaves. The paths that lead through the glen are the paths that Victorian ladies once walked, but few of their footprints seem to be left.

This wasn't the only area in Scotland that, perhaps encouraged by a vivid imagination and love for fantasy, seemed magical to me, and it wasn't the only area to which I felt an immediate, elemental connection. But it was the area where I most felt the presence of the verdant life that had been Growing Wild for more years than I can really comprehend.