Snap Shots

I carry my camera just about everywhere I go these days, but I still find myself without it when some of the best photo ops cross my path. Like the night during the ice storm hell when I stopped at Kroger on my way home from a twenty hour work day and found myself parked next to a car that held a big dog with both paws on the wheel as if he were driving. Maybe I was amused out of exhaustion, but I thought it was hilarious, and I hated that I couldn’t capture it. Everywhere I look these days, I see moments like that I’d like to preserve.

Also, during the ice storm I pulled into the parking lot of the electric utility that serves my home and watched as a middle aged woman exited the building, walked to her car and then laid herself against the car and bawled her eyes out. This was about day fifteen of the power outage, and I assumed she had gotten bad news about her prospects for getting electricity soon. I had my camera that day, and longed to take her picture but refrained from intruding on such an intimate moment. But oh, how I wanted to take that picture. Often, I long to take pictures in the most inappropriate places.

Church is one of those places. The Sunday morning sermon is full of little moments that I would take pictures of if the rest of the congregation (and the preacher) didn’t mind me snapping away. And if I wasn’t supposed to be listening instead of playing. This past Sunday was a prime example. I kept seeing photos everywhere. Even now, I can visualize the pictures and how I’d tweak them in PhotoShop. I would have done most of them in black and white. Alas, I couldn’t take them, and I couldn’t post them. I CAN tell you about them. You will have to use your imagination, but perhaps it’s better that way. Things are often much better in our imagination than they are in real life. I’ll tell you about the pictures I wanted to take, and you tell me if you can see them when you read about them.

1. Five young children eagerly peering over the rail of the balcony with only their little faces visible to those of us below.
2. A senior member of the congregation, a widow, holding and playing with the baby of the young couple sitting in the pew behind her.
3. The face of a choir member as he concentrated on a particularly difficult song note.
4. The fifty-something daughter who always sits with her arm around her mother as if she’s afraid her mother will disappear if she lets go of her.
5. The quizzical face of the four year old near me at the communion rail as he reached for the usher’s bread tray.
6. The same face of the four year old as he struggled to pick a tiny piece of bread out of his little communion cup.

Can you see them? Can you? I think #6 is my favorite. How about you?