The October front cover of Country Living magazine features a cozy cabin, teases that easy pumpkin decorating ideas await us, and proclaims sweater weather season starts now!
Next week brings the first day of autumn; it’s time to replace the seashells on the mantel of happiness with colorful gourds and pumpkins. Sometimes these perfect pictures make us feel that our own homes and lives are inadequate, and we need more of something better.
Media sites like Meta, Instagram and so many others offer snapshots of what a person wants you to think is their perfect life. Snapshots which appear more glamorous, more wealthy and much more attractive than our own lives.
A Wikipedia search says, “The world’s first photograph made in a camera was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce and titled, "View from the Window at Le Gras." Love that it was a window – a look beyond the inside of a house.
There was a time when only the wealthy could afford to own a camera or pay someone to take their picture. Soldiers went off to war clinging to the wrinkled black-and-white photo that focused on the promise of home.
Today our smartphones let us take thousands of pictures, and we can edit them to suit our whimsy. There are so many pictures of people and places on our multiple devices, flooding our daily lives, that they make life complicated and overwhelming.
Don’t you cherish the ones that are in old frames, the ones stuffed in shoeboxes under the bed? These photos remind you of a happier time when someone special was still in your life.
Years ago, when my daughter went off to college and my son was in high school, I was terrified we were going to lose them to the larger world, and they would seldom come home again.
So, I hired a professional photographer to come to our home and photograph the four of us by the pink rhododendron in our backyard at twilight. My daughter whined; my son grumbled and wanted no part of it.
“What do we have to wear?” the three of them moaned.
“Something blue,” I suggested.
On the day of the shoot, we all came downstairs wearing our chosen attire.
“Are you kidding me?” “We look ridiculous.” “No way!” Their howls filled the foyer as the doorbell rang.
When it came time to view the proofs and we were told the cost of a 12-by-12-inch photo, I gasped at the sum. I wanted one large enough to put over the fireplace mantel, but the price was almost as much as a mortgage payment.
Oh, but I loved how happy we looked all in blue in the backyard at dusk, and I wanted to freeze this one moment in time.
I bought a 12-by-12 size to give to my husband’s parents for Christmas, and I bought a huge one for myself. None of them has ever liked it, but I will cherish it forever, as I still long for just a foursome to appear in the same room together.
Every photographer wants the perfect shot.
No matter how many hundreds of photos I take of the setting sun atop the Breakwater East End Lighthouse from aboard the Cape Water Taxi in Lewes, it seems there’s always the expectation of a better one. To be content with life as it happens is my aim.
-
Lisa Graff's essays have appeared in Woman's World Magazine and the Washington Post. She resides in Lewes, Delaware. Reach her at lgraff1979@gmail.com. Find her on Facebook: Our Senior Yearbook: Cape Gazette, Twitter: @lisajgraff1 and her website: lisajgraff.com.
