The New Homestead in Winter

The engraving team Currier and Ives is famous for depicting everyday scenes from a bygone era. They are nostalgic and easy on the eyes as well as our emotions when we look at them. Which is nice.  We also have nice everyday modern scenes, too, which are being depicted by photographers and artists. With photo editing software we can even make our new vistas appear old. Or…simply use a throw-away camera, as my mom did when she took this picture of my brother’s house.

Ok, I admit, I did help this picture along a bit using Picasa software (from Google, and it is a free download). But I did not do much…I cropped it and deepened the contrast a bit before adding the borders.

I love my mom’s picture because it is easy on the eyes and brings to mind a sort-of nostalgic feeling of winter skating parties on frozen country ponds. All is peaceful in her winter scene.  Her composition is nearly perfect, the trees lead the eye to the house in the distance and the sharp contrast of the snow on the sides of the dark tree trunks  are examples of good composition. Great job, Mom!

When my kids were younger I only had inexpensive point and shoot cameras. They were not even 35mm; I mostly had cameras that took 110 film cartridges. Remember them? But it is what I had and what I used to record our special moments. Film and processing were expensive and not usually in the budget for everyday goings on. Now, with digital cameras, we take pictures constantly. Mostly they stay in our computers, which is sad, really. The happy part of this new technology is that we can instantly share our pictures via email, Facebook, and what-not.

The throw-away cameras that mom uses are not reliable for getting artistic shots, but that is Ok by her because she mostly likes to pose people at family gatherings.  Every now and again she gets a lovely shot like this one. Photography has been my favorite hobby since I got my first Brownie Camera as a Christmas gift when I was 10. I now own several high-end DSLRs as well as very good digital point-and-shoots. These cameras are like companions and I seldom without at least 1 camera. The lesson learned is that we do not need expensive cameras to have fun recording life around us, just use what we can afford and have fun with it.  

Marcheta *camera junkie