Casio EX-S10

Thistle 1

It's impossible to count how many moody nights I have had. Many, to say the least. Holed up in someone's living room after the late night businesses have all closed, listening to old recordings of Otis Redding or The Cure on cassette tape, or just simply listening to the rain fall cleaning the world outside. There have been cold nights when the sky has that orange-pink hue that means the snow falls through pollution. There have been nights under summer skies so vast and filled with darkness and stars and there is no beginning, no end, only now, and that ain't much.

Thistle 2

Then, there have been the nights of fast talking, easy listening and chance encounters that are the things of fiction and recollection. There have been incredibly rare steaks in forgotten bistros now long gone after the wake of Katrina. There have been Theremin duals near the sight where John Dillinger was arrested. There have been nights in the sleepy wintertime of the Willamette Valley sipping prohibition style cocktails. Yes, nights and nights and nights. I'm afraid much of my life is reduced to just that, nights, or in many ways, one very long continuous night. Oddly enough, I never set out in life to live only at night. It just developed that way.

Thistle 3

Over the years I have carried a camera. In the past, however, one really needed to think about carrying a camera. See, today, everyone who has a cellphone has a camera. I'm no different. But, that's now. And over the years I have carried a camera the way some fellows may carry a pocketknife.

I became aware of digital cameras later than most. I was gifted one in 2005. That camera was stolen from my house in a burglary in 2008. I was gifted the Casio EX-S10 shortly thereafter. I like this camera because of its size. It takes decent pictures. I have learned how to use it. Admittedly,

Thistle 4

the whole notion of f/stop, ISO or shutter speed, means very little with such a point and shoot sort of automatic device. The camera understands these things and the operator doesn't need to. So, when I tinker with this thing, I only know what the camera has done when I see the results. But it's been fun.

As close as I can tell, photography is the practice of capturing light. That light is translated into image. So, let me ask you, how does one capture light at night?

Roadside Botany 1

I am moving and doing things in the daytime too. I have little free time in the day. I also capture images in the day. Daytime images are a little more straightforward. Daytime images don't happen in dimly lit places like gin joints or jazz clubs. Fun is fun. It's absolutely amazing what you can do with the simplest of digital cameras, or the simplest of film cameras for that matter. The case might be this, it isn't what you have, whether it's a point and shoot or the top of the line DSLR camera, it's what you do with it.