Smokestacks and the Foggy Smudge: Dave’s Photography Adventure

You know how they say that everyone is good at something? Well, everyone is also bad at something. For me, that thing is photography. When you look at the banner at the top of this page, you probably think: “well, it’s nice that blind people are putting their cell-phone cameras to good use.” Except I’m not blind, I used a real camera, and it took me 3 days to get that picture.

It all started one soggy Saturday in September. I stumbled out of bed at 6:15 and drove down to Cottonwood Island Park, in the dark. Just as I parked the car, it started to rain. Luckily, I had my trusty umbrella. So I set out with the borrowed camera and tripod in one hand, and the umbrella in the other. It wouldn't have been very far, since there is a great view of the smokestacks just feet from the parking lot, except I had parked in the wrong parking lot. After 15 minutes of scrambling through mazelike trails, I got to the right place, just on time. So I set up the stuff and waited for the sun to rise, which it did, 20 minutes later, behind a giant bank of fog. Oh well, since I'm here I might as well take some pictures, I thought.

Now, I don't really know a lot about cameras. For example, when I hear the word f-stop, my usual response is: "No, you're an f-stop!" So, instead of taking a few pictures with the right settings, I just took a picture with every setting there was. 2 rolls and 10 frozen digits later, I was done. Success! Actually, not so much. All 50 pictures turned out exactly the same: a blurry, grayish blob. After that morning I went back twice more, and, believe it or not, the picture above is the best one out of almost 4 rolls. The moral of the story is: Dave is not a photographer.

David Henderson (not to be confused with drummer Dave) is an important part of our community. Besides landmark logo production, his areas of service include leadership and writing.