Do you have a magic camera?

Hi neighbors. It occurred to me today, while trying to figure out the date, that July is more than half over! I determined that I would develop a new habit while the weather is good. I then concluded that this new habit could carry on into fall and winter.

What am I talking about? You might well ask as just reading the above doesn’t seem to reveal the subject of this column. The title gives it away. A “magic” camera?

Magic meaning one that makes your day brighter, puts a smile on your face and can be revisited at any time. If you have a digital camera of any type, you have a magic camera! The picture cost nothing to take, can be kept or deleted, and can be printed at your leisure in the future. Most cell phones have cameras in them and the pictures taken can be downloaded to your home computer if you have one.

The true magic in these cameras is what you photograph. I decided that I will get outside once a day and explore my options for photos. What types of photos do we usually take? Family get-togethers, vacations, places we visit, cemetery headstones (if you are a genealogist) and animals or buildings that catch our interest.

Imagine what pictures you would have taken if you had the luxury of a digital camera when you were a child? What type of pictures would you have taken then? Children I know with cameras take selfies – pictures of themselves. They take lots of photos of their friends, photos of their pets, (seldom any of their parents unless they catch them in embarrassing situations) and pictures of things they want as gifts.

But what if you would think back to your own childhood and imagine what photos you would have taken. For instance, how many hours would you lie on the lawn and watch the clouds, looking for shapes of animals or people?

How often would you sit under, or climb into, a tree and watch the limbs sway in the wind and see the shadow of the leaves form patterns on the ground? What about neighborhood animals? I have often wished I had a photo of the neighbors’ old dog Brownie who would endure my crawling in and out of his doghouse. He was an old friend that I would like to revisit in a photo.

My brother and I had a tree in the yard that served him as a “fort” for lining up his green army men to fight off the huge ant army. No one ever took a photo of the ants, the tree or the green army men.

The ice cream truck that came by our house was driven by a man and his three little dogs. No one seemed to mind a few dog hairs on their ice cream wrappers. This truck was always a welcome sight, but I’ll never see it again – and I have no photo!

How many of you have ever taken a photo of your school or school bus? How about your first car? We often laugh or complain about children these days taking all of those “selfies” or photos of their friends and their school activities. If we think about it, we should envy them. The pity is most of those digital photos will never get printed nor saved in any format. Encourage your children to download their selfies and save them to CDs or print out some of them. They will think you later.

So I have determined that I will take my camera with me where ever I go (I have no cell phone) and snap pictures of whatever catches my eye. A pretty flower, the little rabbit Hoppy, that visits my yard daily, the neighborhood cat who prowls his back yard, pretty birds, that silly bush in my back yard that blooms periodically, my own house (that needs painted) and each room within it.

There is one tree in my yard and it is a pretty tree, well shaped and filled out. Kids have always found it to be a good climbing tree. But I have no photos of it – not one!

We all take photos of special events in our lives; but as we age we discover that it is the circumstance of day-to-day routine that we remember.

Until the next time friends, remember to take your camera or cell phone with you and snap a quick picture of whatever catches your eye. If it made you smile when you first saw it, seeing the photo of it will make you smile again.