Different Views

We are on vacation on Grand Island at the north end of Lake Champlain. The lake is between Vermont and New York; the Island is part of Vermont. This is the view from the porch of the house we have been in; we arrived on a windy day but went for a nice swim anyway.


It would be wrong if I gave you the impression that we have been sitting around. We have been biking, paddling kayaks, swimming, cooking, eating, watching movies, even reading a little(!). But I have been fascinated by the changes in our view as the weather and time of day change.


For a day and a half, the wind was blowing so hard that biking on a flat road we felt as if we were biking uphill. We didn't dare go out in the kayaks.


But then the weather calmed, and we could watch the sun set and then watch the stars. The view from the porch has been different every hour of every day. It has been a great reminder that no matter how much we are in motion, our actions are dwarfed by the movement of weather patterns, by the turning of the earth, and by the motion of the earth through space.

Europe, 1980

(Eiffel tower at Night)

In June of 1980 I had just graduated from college, and had the summer free before I started law school. My parents were kind enough to agree that I didn't need to work that summer, giving me the chance to travel, with the understanding that I would pay for my own trip. I had never been away from North America. I decided to spend the summer travelling around Europe. I flew to England, then traveled through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and then back to England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland before flying home. I brought my Canon AE-1 camera and rolls of film.

(view of Florence from the Duomo)

It was an incredible, eye-opening trip. I learned enough in each language to find the youth hostel and buy bread, cheese, fruit, milk or ale. I met up with friends, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by chance. (A former girlfriend and I had a date to meet in England my first week, but she never showed up. Four weeks later we met on a subway platform in Paris, and I learned that her flight the month before had been delayed.) I made new acquaintances everywhere I went. I took long walks by myself, shooting photos everywhere. I set myself a budget of $15 per day, including the youth hostel and my food (but not including transport, which was mostly by rail pass).

(Gondoliers racing in Venice)

I must have shot 20 or more rolls of slide film (36 or 37 shots each); when I got home identified about 400 photos that I liked the best, and they became my "slide show," which no one but my doting parents and grandparents would ever see.

I dug some of these slides out recently when I acquired a new photo scanner that is equipped to scan slides. I found my old slide viewer, flipped through 100 of my slides, scanned a handful that I liked the best. I still liked a lot of the pictures. I was amazed to see the picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, taken with a guess of a long exposure on film, not knowing until the slide was developed 8 weeks later whether the shot would come out.

Some of my photography is the same as what I did with that great old film machine. I look through the viewfinder, and have a gut feel for what I am looking for. It makes a huge difference, though, to be able immediately to see the photo reduced to a captured image, and be able to shoot most shots again, from a different angle, at a different exposure, closer up or further away. Digital photography with a good camera gives me more control over the picture, more ability to show others what I am seeing. And the internet gives me the ability to show just a few pictures at a time to so many friends!

But I sure like some of those old pictures, taken when I was very young ...

(me, in Interlaken)