Gratitude Monday - Playing

Miniature pond forest. A great spot on a hot day.

I was playing with my camera the other day. I don't do it that often despite it being the kind that allows me to select my own shutter speed and/or aperture width and a whole whack of other stuff if I want. Rarely do I want. It is so much easier to set it for fully automatic operation and press a button. It's best when it comes to focussing as my eyes are not the greatest. I frame pictures and focus with the right eye and it is the weaker of the two.
But I miss messing with settings. I can't help myself. I used a Nikon FM professionally for 20 years and I like to play. So on occasion I fool around with the settings on the Pentax K20 and see what I get.
Above, an aperture priority gave me F16 at /1/60 of a second and the camera used the equivalent of 400 speed film. The smaller hole kept most of it in focus while the slow shutter let in light.
I am grateful for the chance to use a camera that lets me play while still being able to set it on auto and not have to think. I am also grateful that I can still remember what those settings mean.

Exquisite Moments

Along Highway 11 at the Kootenay Plains.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you wake up and realize that you are here?
I know reads rather oddly. Where else would you be but where you are?
What I mean is the moments of exquisite life when you are fully awake; when awareness of yourself and your world is at its sharpest.
I’ve had a few of them over the years. Two that I recall were while I was all alone in my car. It was as if I’d awakened after a very long half-sleep and realized who and what I was.
I recall being tickled silly: “I’m all grown up and driving!”
It was good that I was alone on both occasions. I am sure I grinned like a cheerful idiot, and I’m equally sure I would not have given a sensible response if asked why.
I had another one recently. Just the other day I realized that I’m doing the things I said I’d do.

Years ago in junior high school I thought I’d like to be a freelance writer. I had no clue what that would entail, but it sounded good. It made use of two of my favourite words: free and writer.
Also during those years I saw a photograph in a magazine of a street, a fence with a loose board, and a tabby cat half-hidden by said board and I thought I’d like to be a photographer.
“Anything I can’t say in words I can say in pictures,” I thought that day.
When I was eight I told my dad I was going to be a reporter and I was one for nearly 20 years.

Today I am a freelancer. I’ve taken pictures to go with my stories and in the past I've done a few freelance photos for a former newsmagazine, Alberta Report.
I once did a freelance article for another magazine that was based in Edmonton back in the mid-80s. I’ve forgotten the name, but I recall it was run by women.

The other day I was out on my deck enjoying the summer when I woke up to myself and my life and realized I was doing what I said I’d do. I am doing what I want and I am here and I am alive.
That bit of exquisite wakefulness wasn’t as sharp as the ones that came to me while driving, but it was still an exquisite moment.

Has it happened to you? Have you had an exquisite sense of your life and what you've done?