The camera has been sitting the box on the dining room table for a few weeks. Jon said he couldn’t resist buying it for me even though, a couple of weeks before, he bought me the Fuji Instax Instant camera.
“It was on sale,” he told me, ” from Lomography, only $60″. “It’s completely different from the Instax and comes with three different lenses.”
I opened the box when Jon first gave it to me, but it was so complicated, so many different buttons and levers, so many options, I left it on the table till last night.
The reason I finally took the camera out of the box were the dished piled up in the sink.
I knew they would make a good photo. But not with my iPhone. It was the kind of picture that needed an instant camera.
I took four photos of the dishes in the sink before got one I liked. And at the time I wasn’t really sure which one that was.
I sometimes have an idea of what I expect a picture to look like when I take it. And when that doesn’t happen I need time and space away from the picture so I can actually see the pictures I have taken free of my expectations.
Only then do I know which photos are good and which aren’t.
I took about 10 pictures between last night and this morning. I don’t feel like I’m any closer to knowing how to use the camera. But I know I can only learn by using it. I’ve never been about to retain information from any instruction manual by just reading it.
It will be experience that teaches me to use my new Lomo’Instant Camera. And now that I’ve gotten over my initial fear of using it, I can begin learning.
Maria, you apparently learn how to use gizmos exactly as I do! Reading alone will not impart sufficient ability … I need to use it again and again, perhaps badly, before
I feel comfortable … hopefully without negative comments from my spouse …. Then, months down the line, I wonder why I thought it was so complicated!
That’s it’s Joan, I’m the same way. And Once I get it, I really get it!
Great picture, Maria. I get overwhelmed easily when something presents itself to me, with bells, whistles, buttons and complicated instructions. I am not a great “sit down and read the manual” kind of person. I would prefer to poke and pick at something and learn that way. When I was very young, 6 or 7, I heard my sisters practicing the piano. I would go sit at the piano, and play what I heard them playing, by ear. My Mom thought that was amazing, and promptly signed me up for classes. Lordy, that didn’t work out well! I wanted the teacher to play the piece first, then I would pick and poke until I got it. The teacher told me, “you will never be able to play the more beautiful, complicated pieces if you refuse to learn to read music.” And that is exactly what happened. I backed myself into my limited corner. I think I do this out of fear of being told what to do, and fear of being corrected. That took a lot of therapy and work to figure all that out!!
I hear stories, like this and I think it’s too bad your teacher didn’t embrace your way of learning. What a great life lesson that would have been to you, as well as you being able to learn to play piano. I have that same fear of being corrected. I think it’s one of the reasons I like to work alone.
this is what i tackle. the fear of learning.
I find I just have to jump in. It’s mostly a performance anxiety. Once I’m in it, it’s easier and my anxiety disappears or is greatly reduced.
Maria, yes, sad my teacher couldn’t just roll with me. There are piano players who are blind – so they cannot “read” music, they hear it, and pick and poke it out. I still love piano music more than any other kind of music, well, save violin music. Wonder how it would have turned out, had I been allowed to learn my way? Who knows?!
Do you play the piano now Karla?