Sunday, May 24, 2009

Has camera, will tourist


After living in NYC for seven months I finally have a digital camera. Let the revolution begin! I've adapted to the street pace, the instant anger, the transit delays and transitory friendships, the jaw-drops along the waterfront and the Dow drops along Wall Street. Even though I can blend in with the best of them, I'm just now pulling my new camera out and photographing everything I think is fascinating about my new city.


Everything they say about the first child getting all the attention is true. Mostly. There are several photojournals stuffed with my adorableness. Mom and Dad looking young and sexy with my puffy face peering out of jackets as we stroll in Michigan. Me staring at a cat like it's from outerspace (the feeling was moo-tual). Me in a box of stuffed animals. Me watching over the edge of the crib because I absolutely-hands-down refuse to fall asleep while the adults are up. There's a very long track record of how wonderful I was as a child because my dad loved photography and me.


My little brother got a good share of this attention when he finally wandered onstage. After all, he's the first boy. However, by the time we got to my little sisters my dad had outgrown his camera passion along with the time he wanted to dedicate to getting us all cleaned up for photos. There's a whole stretch of time completely undocumented except for birthdays. We were all nuts about our birthday cakes and had to have them recorded for posterity every year. Most of the time mom made us squeeze into the picture too.


Digital cameras should've been our saving grace, and I'm really not certain why that didn't latch on sooner. Maybe because my dad has always been very strict and careful about electronics with the ultimate result being that nobody ever used it except for him. And since he only thought to photograph special occasions or the dog being especially cute, the camera languished downstairs in the Game Closet along with Battleship, Risk, and Trump, a card game completely unrelated to wall street success.


Then came one of the undocumented sisters, who with a fascination for science and a logistical brain streaming with data, realized she could save herself alot of time if she took pictures of everything she wanted to remember like the information plaques below exhibits. This doesn't mean that we have any more photos of our family or life events, but at least the camera's getting some use.