Imagine an image

I am totally and utterly camera-less right now. My beloved Nikon digital SLR is off in the netherworld of Nikon Service Canada. ETA unknown, but I'm mentally bracing myself for a couple of months. This is what I always do when I'm distressed about something: I imagine the worst, work my way into dealing with the worst, and then I am usually happily surprised when things turn out a little better than that.

I fell back on the 1998 Canon Powershot. Its one redeeming feature was that it fit in a Ziploc bag, though I really needed a Ziploc bag to keep track of all it's falling-off and falling-out bits. The main control dial had long ago ejected the little disc that enumerated the functions, so one had to work by guess and feel and memory. The battery compartment door was broken, held in place with duct tape, but eventually just missing, meaning that one had to insert the battery and press it into contact with a thumb while taking a picture (1.2 seconds after the shutter release is pressed) and then hold it in while the image is being processed and written to the memory card. But still, it was a camera, and better than nothing. So I took it camping, and then thought I hadn't taken it camping because it got hidden under a brick of cheese, and didn't take any pictures, but at least I still had the thing. But then the display screen started showing snow, and then nothing, and then the camera no longer turned on at all. So it's gone.

And my Pentax ME Super manual focus SLR, my workhorse film camera from way back when, well, the demise of its shutter release mechanism was what sent me looking for a digital SLR in the first place two years ago.

So I am utterly camera-less. And the funny thing is that I'm finding it really hard to blog. Even if I have something I want to write about, I find it hard to really dig in and get the flow of words started without that left-justified image at the top of my post. How pathetic.

We spent the better part of today at the GRUBS Harvest Festival. There were all sorts of delicious images there waiting to be captured -- children around the bonfire, 4-year-olds and 15-year-olds romping together in silly games, children working in teams of two cranking the apple press, more kids chopping vegetables, smiling and sampling grape and pear juice, stirring the soup, engaged in deep conversations in little nooks in the woods nearby.

But you'll have to imagine those images, because the whole time they were flitting by in real time I was mourning the fact that I couldn't hold on to them.

But here is a little one from last year, just for good measure. This year was much the same, though with less sun, and kids all one year older, stronger, smarter and more capable. Funny how that works.