There Is No Cat

Staggering across the finish line

Well, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, but with a little over an hour to spare, I’ve completed my entry in the 26 Things photographic scavenger hunt. I wasn’t happy with some of my attempts at some of the words (Thanksgiving dinner for "too much" was a non-starter, for example, and I wasn’t happy with my shots of either the air conditioner coil or the boarded-up ice cream stand for "cold"), and a couple of shots from Thanksgiving of our niece and nephews came out fantastic and would have been great (nephew G. is "too much", particularly when he’s hamming it up for the camera), but I wasn’t comfortable publicly posting a photo of a four year old without his parents’ permission. So I spent a couple of hours tonight running around the house to fill the gaps, and revisited some tentative picks that I was holding off on in hopes that I could come up with something better ("high point" and "layered" are examples of this; not that I don’t like the photos, just that I thought I might come up with things more closely linked to the concepts). A couple of last-minute improvisations came out pretty well, I think, particularly "electric", which I’m really pleased with.

I shot 466 photographs to get 26 useful ones, which gives a yield of just over 1 in every 18 photos. I figure that’s not too bad. I would never have shot so many pictures if I didn’t have my digital camera; film costs would just be too prohibitive. I learned a lot about how to use my new Canon EOS Digital Rebel, which I acquired a few weeks before the beginning of the project (but didn’t get for the purpose of using it for 26 Things; I was just fulfilling a long-standing desire to get a better digital camera than the old Kodak DC260 I was using). That had a lot to do with why I decided (with a little prodding from my friend Deb) to try.

I had a lot of fun participating, even if it took my attention away from some other things I should have been doing, like working around the house (see the final photo used for "too much" for more information). I think the hunt is a brilliant idea, and I’d like to thank Tracey for coming up with the idea and more importantly, following through (good ideas are a dime-a-dozen; following up on them is invaluable). Now I can put the camera down for a while and focus on Christmas and housecleaning.

Posted at 11:32 PM