Camera Geeks and Seacamp

Why do so many older guys love to talk about cameras?

I love taking pictures, but I am completely indifferent to the technology. The beauty of photography for me is in choosing and framing the images. Yes, I know how to set the camera and get the shot, but I've never understood these guys who want to sit around and talk about F-stops and camera speeds and megapixels and essentially reduce all of photography to numbers.

And then they want to talk about camera gear, lenses and tripods and filters and how much they spent for each item, which also makes my eyes roll back in my head.

Last night, Mom and I went down to the dock on Julington Creek, a tributary of the St. John's River, to watch the sunset. We found that some of her neighbors, an older man and his wife, had colonized the end of the dock with a tripod and were taking pictures. Of course I pulled out my own camera, and the man proceeded to quiz me about how I was shooting, on what settings, etc. He was nice enough but LORD.

It was a good hour for that golden evening light. I got several shots of my mom as she sat chatting with the neighbors. The sunlight really was that color. I haven't adjusted it at all.

We hung around the house most of the day yesterday. In fact, after we took our morning walk and sat on her balcony hoping the hummingbird would return (it didn't) and had lunch, I decided I had to get out of there. So I announced that we were going to Goodwill and then to Starbucks.

My mom is not at all a thrift store person, but she tagged along obligingly. I had to make my Goodwill sweep pretty quickly, but I did find a couple of prizes. I got a nice shirt for work and also this:

It's a t-shirt from an educational center in the Florida Keys that I attended in the eighth grade!

In fact, here's a really terrible picture of me at Seacamp in 1980, hoisting a conch shell that I'd found while snorkeling. If I remember correctly it had something living in it -- a crab, maybe. I didn't try to take it home.

Anyway, I was pretty psyched by that t-shirt. I also found one from the West Virginia Penitentiary that gave us a good laugh -- even the people browsing near us thought it was a hoot. I kind of wish I'd bought it too. It would have given me a reputation in London.

After Goodwill and Starbucks we came home and watched a funny Tina Fey and Amy Pohler movie called "Sisters." Watching it with Mom was kind of mind-blowing -- there were a fair number of penis jokes and that sort of thing -- but she laughed up a storm so, hey, no harm done. It's not like she doesn't know how the world works.

Speaking of which, I think her Algerian pornography problem on Facebook may be getting slightly better. I've been reporting and blocking dozens of accounts that have been recommended to her as "friends," and I'm hoping the Facebook algorithm is beginning to recognize that those are not the kind of friends she wants.