18 February 2014

Yon Evil Bush

Shutterbugging - a word I learned from Rosie. It means adventuring with the purpose of capturing beautiful photographs.

I recently purchased a very, very, very nice camera (pocketbook went OUCH!), but have had little opportunity to use it in my normal, day-to-day, erm, mostly boring life. This past weekend I found myself on one of the most beautiful college campuses in the world, which also happens to be my alma mater. It was the perfect opportunity for shutterbugging.

I meandered about, sometimes lying flat on my stomach to get the right angle, sometimes straddling bushes to capture a flower. One must make sacrifices for one's art.

I made one unanticipated sacrifice that ended up being rather time consuming.

You see, when a lady is in the real world, she finds herself carrying a purse everywhere she goes. This provides a convenient place to keep many things, one of which is her phone. When one gets used to always having a purse, one forgets how very inconvenient it is not to have a purse. This is relevant because, you see, most women don't carry purses on campus. I guess it's because you usually have a book bag or something, but most people don't walk around with a purse all the time. It would be very inconvenient and cumbersome. Being an alumna, I neglected to even bring a purse with me on this visit.

Wearing Sunday clothes, I had no pockets. I found myself with my camera around my neck, and phone in hand. This situation forced me to be creative with methods of holding my phone while still acquiring magnificent shots.

For one particular shot, I had my phone tucked under my elbow. I found myself leaning over, torso at at a right angle to my legs, trying to snap a photo of a rose (a photo which inspired a blog post to come...). I didn't quite have the angle I wanted and, without thinking about my precariously placed phone, I lifted my right elbow to change the angle of the shot. As focused the lens, I felt the phone slip and heard a soft thud. I finalized my shot, captured it, and then began the search for my phone. I knew it had landed in the bush that was directly under my elbow (dictated by the nature of gravity and confirmed by the noise it made) and thus directed my search there.

Fifteen minutes later, I was still squatting next to the bush, dirty and sweating now, but still without my phone. It had managed to disappear completely, as far as I could tell. The bush ate my phone.


It looks so innocent and innocuous. And small. Yet this bush was able to hide my phone from me for a solid 15 minutes. I was beginning to doubt whether I even had a phone when I finally found it wedged deep inside the bush. I'm not sure what this whole episode says about me, but I'm fairly certain that it doesn't say anything good. 


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