This is the longest day of my life!
I’m sitting here waiting for the FedEx truck to arrive at my house, so I can sign for my new camera.
It’s a Sony Alpha 7 Mark V, and it’s so expensive that B&H insisted that I sign for the delivery. If you’re gone when the delivery guy knocks, you come home to a sticker on your door: Sorry we missed you. You can pick up your package at our facility in East Nowhere in 3 days, after 6pm. Aaaargh!
So here I sit, afraid to poop, unable to go for a walk. Camped at the window overlooking the driveway. Checking the FedEx app every 5 minutes to see if the estimated delivery window has changed. Nope. Still 3:30 to 5:30.
I was just reminded of the anticipation I felt when I bought my first professional saxophone, more than 15 years ago now. (Though in that case, I didn’t have to wait for a delivery at home.) With the sax, I had to earn my own permission to level up my gear—and of course, get Susan’s signoff on the major purchase.
I started with a cheap tenor sax that I’d bought in my twenties (don’t ask Susan about that story). Back then I never practiced, and I quickly lost interest. The horn stayed in my closet for more than twenty years, unplayed and forgotten. When my kids were in high school, I picked it up and rekindled my motivation. I promised myself that if I practiced regularly for a few years, and took lessons, and joined a band, I would eventually become a sax player, not just a sax owner. I played my way toward the day when I got to take home my lifetime saxophone. And I’ve played regularly ever since.
Let’s check the app again … still 3:30 to 5:30. What do I do until then?!
I guess I can look through the thousands of photos I’ve taken in the past 18 months with my old camera, the Olympus E-M10 Mark IV. I’ve walked several miles a day with my Olympus strapped to my shoulder. I’ve taken photos of people in the street, countless frogs and turtles and birds, buildings, flowers and trees and butterflies and dragonflies. On walks through my neighborhood, at our local parks, on day trips to DC, at concert venues. My Photos app says I’ve taken more than 7,000 photos with this camera—and those are just the shots I kept.
Look at this one:
I took that last spring near my house, out on my evening walk, when I was trying to figure out how to get good sunset shots. The road leads directly west, and if you time things right, you can catch a sunburst on the horizon. As I was waiting for the sun to set, this fox crossed the road near me. I gently moved the camera up to my eye and waited for the fox to walk back. After it sniffed this side of the road, it headed across and I got a lucky shot.
Here’s another critter I caught in mid-action:
For this one, I was teaching myself how to look into people’s windows without fear. I was framing this cat in the viewfinder when he yawned like a lion. A woman and her son across the street gave me concerned looks when they saw what I was doing, but I ignored them.
One more before we check the app again:
Owning the Olympus motivated me to learn things about photography that I’d never realized before, like how you have to get on your subject’s eye level if you want a powerful image. Like how you have to frame the scene and settle in, wait for your moment so you get a clean reflection, and keep out anything extraneous.
Checking …
The app says I’ve got at least an hour of waiting left. But at 3:30, the app will let me watch the truck make its way toward my neighborhood in real time—and I can be right there at the end of the driveway when it pulls up.
One hour seems like an eternity, but I can do this. I need an affirmation. As I wait, I repeat to myself, like Stuart Smalley: “Today is the day I get my lifetime camera. And I’ve earned it.”
