Life is a Photo Op

Like most people, I go to work every day and have to be inside an office building. During the summer I see all the landscape crews working in various yards and envy them being outside playing in the dirt all day (although they probably don't see it like that). 

To offset having to be cooped up all day, I take a walk on my lunch hour, rain or shine, almost without fail. When it’s raining I’m not quite as thrilled about bundling up in rain gear (especially if I happen to be wearing my glasses that day, rain and glasses do not mix), but on sunny days, it’s all I can do to stay inside until my lunch hour. 

I've learned to always take my camera with me, in fact if I don’t have it in my hand it feels like some part of my body is missing (two hands, check, two feet check, what’s not right?). Depending on how energetic I feel, there are several different routes to take. My office backs up to a residential area so I have my pick of gardens and flowering shrubs during the summer. 

During the autumn months, the sidewalks and parking lots explode in every shade of fallish color imaginable. Although I rarely take pictures of parking lots (I know, I know, they’re so photogenic), every year it seems I end up with a new picture of this parking lot because the colors demand attention. The only bad thing about fall is that winter is right around the corner. 

But even the gloomy winter months can yield an occasional surprise. This year we had some really late snows (please don’t say global warming causes things to get colder; that makes my head explode) and I spent several mornings running around before work to take pictures of daffodils in the snow because I knew by the afternoon the snow would be gone.

 Spring is hit and miss when it comes to getting good pictures because the weather is so unreliable. While raindrops look beautiful on irises, they don't do much for camera lenses. Fortunately, there are usually enough dry days interspersed with the rainy ones that I have a chance to get pictures of the tulips, daffodils, and irises before they are past their prime. 

A woman once asked me why I had my camera with me every day and when I said it was to take pictures, she looked as if I'd lost my mind and said she’d never heard of such a thing. My immediate thought was "maybe you should get out more, there's more to life than these beautiful brick buildings we work in.”