Photography

Another creative avenue for me is photography. I love to take pictures. I take tons when I go on trips and like to take my camera with me when I drive into town on Fridays. Sometimes I'll use it and sometimes I won't. It's no big deal for me to take over 200 pictures on any given vacation. I just love to take pictures...

Of course if you take note of the above picture it's rather old, has that old brownish tinge to it and actually has rounded edges, but when I scanned it I squared it off. Why did I add this particular picture to this particular entry? Because it's the FIRST picture I ever took on my very own. Way back when I was oh probably 10 maybe? I got a camera for Christmas, one of those old Kodak cameras with the click thingy to prep it for the next photo and the attachable flash. Yeah it might not have been a whole lot and by modern standards is probably called "antique" now, but I loved that old camera.

So what is this a picture of you ask? Well snow of course and somehow a slip of curtain got into that photograph too. I can honestly say they don't make curtains like that anymore! : )

This picture was taken at my grandmother's old house. I loved that old house. It was a big white house that sat on a corner and had a wrap around porch and all. My grandparents had one of those old coal stoves in the basement that they'd load for heat and the house had the neatest most beautiful cherry bannisters. I loved that old house and miss it dearly. It still stands today but sits empty and has been "modernized". It has little of the former glory it had back then.

Anyways this photo was taken in what we always coined "the back room" or to put a better name to the room we would simply refer to it as "the piano room". In it was contained two or three pianos. One was a player piano and my cousin and I used to go back, turn it on and act like we could actually play it! the carpet in the room was an ugly off orange color but that room held so much memory in it and due to that and where this photo was taken from I cherish this particular photograph.

I remember that view from when I was a kid. We used to (my brother and I) walk on the brick wall you can sort of see the outline of in the snow. My grandfather would get so mad at us for doing that he'd yell at us but we continued to walk that wall because we just thought it so neat. Off to the left of the photo and out of site of the camera was an old grape harbor. Oh the memories this simple photo dredges up...brings a bright smile to my face every time as I recall all the good times we had and shared in that house.

Both grandparents that had at one time lived there have now passed on. I miss them both, especially my grandmother, and I miss that old house. I can still hear myself giggling as I envision running up those steps my hand dragging across the smooth bannister as I ran. I can still recall walking down those steps and admiring the child-like pictures she had hung along the wall of cats and dogs and such. I would have loved to have those particular pictures but they are now forever lost. Still I can remember staring at them and into them imagining what those animals would be like. I can still recall how the lights of the local traffic would catch on the floor to ceiling windows in the living room and cast an eerie glow about the room.

I still remember the family gatherings we had there, the times my brother and I would run up and down those steps, the times we'd play for endless hours in that old back room, and I will forever recall my cousin and I sitting perched just so on the bench of that old player piano and giggle to our hearts content as we cranked it on and pretended to play the instrument with our own hands.

The memories that photograph stirs up are ones I will forever cherish. They sometimes bring tears to my eyes and while one can tell by looking at it how much of a novice I was to photography back then I'm so glad I took that simple little picture and have it as a constant reminder of a past too quickly forgotten, a time gone by too abruptly and of a little girl giggling with her very first camera clutched so tightly in her hands as she aimed it out that window and snapped her very first shot...