Despite having chiding myself for doing precisely this just a few days ago, I once again managed to leave the house without my camera.
Lucky for me, Bob had his camera tucked away in the Fannypack of Great Awesomeness, and I was able to capture this pattern of mesh, color, light & shadow.
This circumstance is a fine example of the virtuous cycle. It has given me great pleasure that Bob has started taking an increased interest in observing and cataloging the things of beauty or curiosity in his day-to-day life. I take some small credit for encouraging that. And because he has begun to value this practice, he had his camera on him when I did not.
He doesn’t especially care for this picture, whereas I really like it. (It puts me in mind of some Lazlo Moholy-Nagy images.) That’s fine. Diversity of taste and creative vision is a good thing, it gives all of us something to share with one another.
Just as a side note: although it probably doesn’t much show at these web-ready resolutions, there is indeed a meaningful quality distinction between my everyday camera (the Panasonic Lumix GF-1) and Bob’s Nikon Coolpix S630, a compact point-and-shoot. I have become accustomed to the lovely clarity of big, fast optics and the forgiving dynamic range made possible by shooting RAW. The difference was instantly clear as I was trying to wrangle the best out of the high-res JPEGs that Bob’s camera produces. The pixel count of the two cameras is identical, which underscores the oft-repeated truism that size isn’t everything — when it comes to megapixels, anyway.
