Light tricks

The lovely and talented Sarah is participating in a photo challenge this year. The most recent assignment is "shades of grey". She captured a patio table covered in ice - love the delicate branching of the cracks.

It reminded me of my favorite taken-by-me photo, the black and white photo that really was taken with color film.

A few years after college, I took a Caribbean cruise. Sun, sand on one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world, excellent shopping and a multitude of photo opps. At the time, I bought a Nikon One Touch - a basic point and shoot, 35 mm film camera (do I have to explain "film" to my younger readers?) with optional telephoto add-on - to take with me.  The negatives from that trip so long ago are...well, maybe around somewhere, but I do have a single 8 x 10 print preserved in a put-your-picture-here mouse pad.

Why I wandered around deck with my camera in hand, I'm not sure.  I do know the photo was an impulse shot, one I had no idea would work (and with film, I wouldn't know until a week after I came home from the cruise).  The only thought I had as I raised the camera was that I needed something to put the sunlight in scale and context, and the lifeboat would do the trick.

As is the way at sea, five minutes later the sky was clear.