The leaves have begun to fall. And what has my city forecast for it this evening? Thunderstorms.
Yesterday, I took the above photograph with the camera I owned — an Olympus C-5060.
This morning, I took the above photograph with an Olympus C-7070, the camera for which I sold my C-5060. My parents have been without a reliable, semi-professional camera since their aging Canon thirty-five millimeter became too costly to repair without considering a digital replacement. A paralyzing breadth of available models and other financial priorities delayed their purchase — indefinitely, perhaps, had I not decided to browse the B&H website while chatting about photography to my friend, Ed, and found the C-7070 at an extraordinarily attractive price. Would my parents be willing to take a C-5060 at the going used-item rate? They would, and wrote a check for the agreed sum.
The C-7070 arrived yesterday. It is identical in form; the plating is dark grey and smooth to the C-5060's mottled black. The C-7070's mode dial is completely redesigned, thankfully, given the C-5060's notorious difficulties — an electronic failure that, earlier in the year, disappeared as suddenly as it appeared during the operation of my model, though I am prepared to help should my parents encounter a relapse. Each camera uses an electronic menu very similar to the other's; the C-7070's graphic user interface slightly more solid, if more intrusive.
Performance? Yesterday's horizon did not, I will admit, offer the best light, try as I did to meter from the hills and not the sky. But the C-7070 metered both ground and clouds similarly, its response to the yet-disparate amounts of light much more subtle. And with 30 percent more pixels, the C-7070's exposure — even when reduced to a size appropriate for posting — appears to be slightly finer than that of the C-5060.
I have the same camera with a few improvements, and two of my closest associates are now free to take their own snapshots. That's good fortune.
An open-air market: walking through neighborhood yards during today's lunch hour, I caught two American Goldfinches at their own work. My camera has been bundled in my satchel nearly every day of the summer, so I quickly pulled it out; and for the next two minutes I crept, a foot forward at a time, lens up, stalking the birds.
Nearly ten feet away, I snapped a couple reasonably well-defined exposures before I took the step that finally frightened the two creatures and sent them flying off, a startled peep each.
I grinned, watching the finches' progress upward through florid yellow, green and blue before losing sight of them; and began walking at a regular pace again, cutting through yards to where I had parked my car. Like everyone else I had Hurricane Katrina's wake on my mind, and that moment with the birds tugged at a memory. I was readying myself for the day on the morning of July 14, 2001 when my father picked up the phone to receive the anticipated message from my uncle that my grandfather had died. Over the murmur of the brief conversation between brothers, I heard an exuberant twittering of birds outside an open window in my parents' bedroom and considered the birth up a tree in the yard; and out in the city, the state, the country and the world, as one man's life came to an end, after nine decades, in Astoria, New York. Creation having made — through youth — tomorrow possible, I thought, none of what came before will be in vain.
My thoughts turned to New Orleans, then back to the memory, and I took great consolation.
Every so often, the world shows its age.
With the early-week cold front came a scene change.
Seen coming or not, it's still a thunderstorm.
Where else but the Creation does one find mystery a constituent of daily routine?
To remember at the greatest depth of impediment: He will neither fail you nor forsake you.
Two weeks ago, splendor rumbled through.
Eastbound.
Westerly.
