Photo crisis du jour

Monday I was walking home from the store and saw a beautiful scene, with a huge forsythia in full bloom emerging from behind a wooden fence.  Whipped out my camera, took a picture, checked the view screen -- and wondered what the black fuzzy triangle was at the lower left. 

You guessed it, the eyelids that are supposed to retract to reveal the lens weren't retracting all the way.  What had happened?  Fifteen minutes previously everything was OK.  The only thing I'd put in my pocket since stowing the camera was a folded sheet of paper, but maybe that was enough to give the camera a shiner.

Yesterday I took the camera in to the shop and bade it good-bye as it went off to be fixed.  Then headed out for my walk.

I have a backup camera, the old one that I upgraded from last summer, but it wasn't charged up and ready to go with me.  So I was camera-less on this walk, the first time that's happened in many months.  And I realized in a very short time how naked and unprepared I felt.

It's been about two years since I started carrying a camera every time I took a walk.  It has changed the way I look at things -- I'm always seeing photo ops in the most unlikely places.  Sometimes I just look at colors and textures and how they juxtapose.

But more often I find beauty, decrepitude, humor and just plain weirdness.  In my hour of walking yesterday I saw at least twenty things that I wanted to document -- but wait!  No camera!

I came home and plugged in the battery charger for the old camera.  Maybe tomorrow I'll retrace my steps and get photos of the pumpkin in the alley (could it have been purchased before Halloween and still look that good??) and the boat hiding in a garage and the flowering quince in full bloom.  Everywhere you look there's a picture to be taken, but you need that camera in your pocket.