Blurry Happy Baby
So a few years ago I was in Egypt, touring the pyramids on camelback. Snapping pictures with my Nikon FG. The guide is on a horse, he leads tourists around all day, and he rides up and offers to take my picture. I’m trying to hand him my camera, keep my balance and explain to him how to look through the viewfinder and see when the split ring is in focus. He’s waving me off, no no, he knows what he’s doing. Of course he does, I realize, this guy takes thousands of people a year on this tour, he can probably work every camera ever made.
So I’m back in the States, after 3 months in Africa, getting my film developed. Because I was traveling alone, I was always behind the camera and there are very few photos of me. I’m really looking forward to seeing this one. And it is classic. An iconic picture. Me. Camel. Pyramids. As blurry as if it were shot through a glass of water.
The guide probably held the shutter release halfway down for a moment expecting it to autofocus and snapped the pic. I’d had this camera since my twelfth birthday, probably most of his tourists were carting something more modern, less manual.
And I love that picture. It is terrible as a photograph, but it holds so many memories for me. Thick Turkish coffee, shopping for rugs, bargaining for a stone scarab, terrifying taxi rides, museums, a boat ride on the Nile, the Valley of Kings, sunshine, swimming in the Med.
And so now I take terrible blurry pictures of my wonderful happy baby. My phone is not the best camera in low light, and as photographs these are pretty worthless, but as memories they are priceless. I still have the Nikon FG, as well as a couple Nikon DSLRs, and I get some sharp, well-lit photos as well. But I wouldn’t trade the blurry blurry ones for anything.
