just the twenty-first

Today I took several Average Photographs. First, I got lunch with friend Catalin after work, whom I haven't seen in a while, and like any pair of teenagers sliding into the summer doldrums we had no idea what to do, so we sat in a park that was hot. Very hot. Hot as balls, I believe.

I rate this as average not based on subject matter, Cat i luv u.

Then I got home and started reading a book and doing my laundry and it was raining and the rain was nice in the light, sort of pale yellow, and the sun was a bright splotch sitting on the edge of the mountains, and the puddles in the driveway created a fractured watercolour of the world, and the rain turned into a fine mist so I thought it would be a good time to take a photo. I ran inside to get my camera, but it was just a few moments too late, and the sun had ducked behind the edge of the valley, and the light was gone, so I took a dumb picture of a flower.

Edited to mimic the light, of course. Then, feeling perhaps a momentarily lapse in young adult propriety and a wistful childlike urge to become part of the environment, I lowered my face into the puddle.

And I look very tired, because I was, although not sad, just interested, like maybe I should put away my words and my lens and just feel the world with my hands and face and feet for a while, but it started raining again, and my camera was going to get wet, so I went inside, and I read more, and I left the world. The street you live on feels prosaic, presently. Maybe it didn't, once, because you had less to think about, and more room to observe.

I made food, I made french pressed coffee with homemade whipped cream, of which I have eaten half a pint in the past two days, with blueberries. 

Just a day, mundane, images. 

And I did start to type out 'maybe if you jam all three images together they will amount to an Interesting Image,' and then I thought, well actually I can do that, so let's see. I put them into Merge HDR in Photoshop, a feature which combines two or more images that are of the same thing but are exposed differently to get a higher dynamic range of light. It just mashes them together and gives you a list of preset effects to make it photorealistic or high contrast or whathaveyou. 

So I came out with this–

It doesn't look like it but all three images are in there. It's interesting, if anything. 

Perhaps I will compose something tomorrow, or in my sleep, or on the way out of it.

Cool, cool,

–Rachael