And now, a Photo. #2

And now, a photo:

This is an old favorite of mine. And it's not very good, in technical photography terms: It's not very sharp, the color isn't fantastic, the low-light didn't render particularly well on this device, and...

...well, I don't care about any of that, because I love the memory and the mood and I love the view here. We were in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, 2015, and we had just finished our Thanksgiving dinner at a little restaurant called Senza Gluten. I had already noticed, when we were walking there, that One World Trade Center was, like, dead-center down this street, so as soon as we left, I quickly verified that no cars were coming, and I dashed out and captured this image, with my phone.

Again, it was 2015. My phone was a Samsung Galaxy S4, which at the time was a kick-ass phone but now would be like one of those episodes of Star Trek when they go back in time and realize how archaic everything is. But still, I love the photo. I love it for the light shining along the sidewalks and coming at me from a few blocks down at the bottom. I love the tower of light in 1WTC. I love that the sky is just slightly blue at the bottom and giving way to black. It had been a beautiful day, and now it was a beautiful night. (And it would get even more beautiful because I realized as we headed the other way, back to the subway, that we were actually very near Washington Square.)

For all the photography advice out there on how to take low-light photos and how to compose them and how to get good color and how to get perfect tack-sharp images, there's also a piece of advice that often gets cited almost as an antidote to focusing too much on the technical stuff: The best camera is the one you have with you. At that moment I had that phone with me. (I don't remember if I had taken my point-and-shoot at the time, a Nikon Coolpix L-840, with me on that trek to dinner.) Another way I've heard this sentiment expressed is this: The imperfect photo you actually take is infinitely superior to the perfect photo you did NOT take.

And besides, for all that we want to make wonderful images, the purpose of a photo is often to preserve a memory, and for that, you really don't need perfection at all, do you?

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all around the Galaxy!

Exeunt,
--K.

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