The Eye of the Camera

(Brief interruption of my tedious Florida travel log...you can leave and go to the bathroom.)


I like to think that my love of photography is my new hobby due to having more time now that I am retired.  I also like to think that the digital technology has made this another reason I take pictures so generously and spend so much time looking for new things to take pictures of.

But, in truth, I have taken pictures my whole life.  I saved my allowance for my first camera when I was about 11.  It was a Kodak Brownie box camera.  It was just exactly that, a small black plastic box with a tiny lens to preview your shot.  I could barely afford the film and had to send it out for development to some address I discovered on the back of one of my well perused comic books each time I saved enough money.  I had the camera for about a year, when one hot summer day I forgot and left it in the back window of our Chevrolet and it warped in the heat.  My mother was totally unsympathetic and hoped I had learned a lesson.  (I always suspected she saw it there and left it to prove a point although with her odd punishment theories, who knew.)  I was devastated.

There were later cameras to follow that I purchased as a teenager.  After I married my husband, I was free to use his expensive Nikon with the underwater housing, a camera that became my best pal when I was learning to SCUBA dive in the South Pacific and beginning to discover the beauty beneath the surface of the ocean. 

While we traveled overseas to many countries there were only two times when I was very uncomfortable taking pictures as a tourist and realized how much contrast there was in freedom in American.  One time I was traveling in Taiwan.  I was approached by a policeman who made it quite clear that I would not be allowed to continue to take pictures on one of the outlying islands close to Mainland China that we visited.  I was also told to keep my camera in my lap during the short plane ride to the island. (I think I remember that I cheated a little.)  While living in  Egypt for a short time one summer, I was approached by a police officer in Cairo and told I could not take photos down a certain street.  I was also approached later that week in Port Said, Egypt, and told I could not take photos after approaching a bridge area that was leading to the Suez Canal.  These Egyptian uniformed and weapon-carrying men were stern and serious and I did not question their authority, both because I could still see the damage to buildings from a recent war, and I did not want to lose my camera or film.

A few weeks ago I received the following link in an email newsletter on photography.  If you take pictures I suggest you watch it carefully because it says a lot about how fragile our freedoms can be.  It also reminds us that we need to know our countries laws and rights and to be aware of how silly irrational fears can make us lose important freedoms in an instant.  Freedoms that when taken away do NOT make us any safer.

Of course one should always ask permission before taking someone's photo, because sometimes they can be very shy and intimidated.