Camera happy husband calls the shots
Lori Borgman | Monday, July 06, 2009
For years our family vacations have come closer
to resembling hostage-taking events than relaxing getaways.
We do a lot of abrupt stopping on vacation --
all in the name of scenic photography. The husband takes command
of the vehicle and refuses to let go. We careen to the side of the
road for a waterfall and screech to a stop in a gravel parking lot
for a nest of osprey.
It is like riding in a getaway car, speeding from
one telephoto shot to another.
The Photo Marketing Association reports that digital
camera owners in the United States will shoot 27 billion photos
this year. What they failed to report is that the husband will take
26 of those 27 billion.
So the man is an overachiever. He does good work.
Still, there’s only so much stopping and starting
you can do before you start to feel the effects of whiplash.
“When the cable cars jerk to a halt in San Francisco,
the conductors at least call out the stop,” I say.
“Blue sky with sailboats!” he yells as we shoot
to a boat dock.
“Old timer in quaint village!” he calls, doing
a quick U-turn.
“Field of blue lupine,” he yells, jerking the
car hard right.
I’m not saying all of his picture taking has made
me suspicious, but when he suggests we go for a walk because it
is a full moon, I ask who is going.
“Is this ‘we’ you and me, or is it you, me and
the camera?”
We rented a cottage for a week in a small lobster
village in Maine this summer. The locals say civil sunrise there
is around 3:30 a.m. although it feels considerably uncivil when
your room lights up a full two hours before the sun actually pops
into view. It’s morning light that lasts half the day and is a photographer’s
dream.
One morning we went for a bike ride -- at 5:30
a.m. – with the husband balancing cameras and lenses in a backpack
strapped to his bike. In a small rocky cove, a lone lobsterman in
a red shirt was checking his cages from a blue and yellow boat.
The husband parked his bike to shoot and I pedaled
a ways farther. I did a U-turn, overshot the road with no shoulder
and wound up in a small gully. The husband was focused on a quiet
scenic while an action shot was unfolding right behind him.
I often entertain myself by reading a book while
he jogs out for his brief photo shoots. I read three books on vacation.
In two days.
When the husband stopped to photograph a lily
pond for the second time in a half an hour, I put myself on a reward
system. For every minute he kept shooting, I rewarded myself with
an M&M from a bag in the center console in the car.
The husband got back in and asked if I had heard
a deep thud-like noise. “It was like something was banging over
and over,” he said.
“Like this?” I asked, dropping the lid to the
console.
We cruised a quarter mile and made a quick turn
into a small market.
“Where’s the picture?” I asked. “I need new batteries,”
he said.
“Then get more M&Ms.”
