Just A Coupla Snaps For A Friday Afternoon

This may seem weird but one of the things I envy the most about the younger generations is their ability to instantaneously and thoroughly document their lives.

I got my first Kodak Instamatic when I was 7 or so, but cameras back then took these weird cassettes of film that cost money to buy and then time and money to develop. You had to be choosy with what you photographed because you only had 12 or 24 shots. Worse still, you didn’t know what you had until you got the prints back from Fotomat or Thrifty’s.

I bought my first digi 12 years ago, a 320 x 240 Casio that set me back almost $300, but nowadays with camera-equipped phones and point-n-shooters at really low prices there’s nothing that can’t be catalogued and no reason not to. Me? I only have vague memories. Kids these days? Everything’s pixelized, and yesh: I am so jealous.

Thus that’s a key reason why I carry a camera wherever I go. First, because you never know what might happen around you or what you might find, and second because it might not be there the next day or even a couple hours later.

This is even more true on a bike — stuff that you’d otherwise miss or rationalize against stopping to snap, becomes that more accessible from the saddle, and having a camera in my possession gives me the opportunity to capture things that might only be fleeting, like these two images below.

The first I found riding home yesterday evening. Across Ballona Creek from me was this diminutive woman standing before a small gathering of birds that she was feeding on the south bank. The second is one that epitomizes spring time in Los Angeles. As beautiful as jacaranda trees are in bloom, I find the carpet of the blossoms they soon shed equally eye-catching, and in that just-right light, I wasn’t about to lose this scene to any leafblower that might be on its way to tidy up.

Both are clickably biggifiable.

bccreek jax1