Always Opportunities to Capture Images

Kind of neat time right now for my son, Elijah.  He's a ninth grader/freshman at Coral Reef Senior High School in South Dade.  It's a good school and my son is their Drama Magnet program.  He enjoys performing and the arts in general but has a strong interest in Film Making.  So recently there was a Dade County High School Video Competition to create a one minute commercial to discourage high school students from drinking and driving.  Well, Elijah's entry WON!  His video will be featured as D.Y.F.I.T. (Drug Free Youths in Town) campaign video on the subject for 2012.  It was very exciting for us!

In winning the competition, Elijah will be rewarded $500 Cash Prize and an Award Plaque at their annual banquet coming up on May 11th.  That's a lot of money for a young teenager to get all in one sum!  He's been learning to play the guitar and absolutely loving it.  In the process, he's had to borrow or use whatever guitar is available.  So he hasn't been learning on a "fine instrument".  I did not want to invest in a guitar and have him lose interest, and later find this few hundred dollars instrument collecting dust in a corner of his room.  What I did tell him was that he would value his first guitar far more if he had to pay for it with his own money. Also mentioned that a Summer job would be one way to start that process.

As you can probably guess by now, he wants to use that Cash Prize to purchase his first guitar.  I can't argue with that because he DID WORK HARD to create, edit and submit the video.  This leads me to the writing of this blog.  Elijah asked if we could go to a Guitar store so that he could handle a few guitars to help him narrow his choices down of what he could buy next week.  Being a male that his kicked a few tires in new car showrooms prior to buying a car, I understood where he was coming from.

 So off we went to the Guitar Center on Kendall Drive, a local mecca for aspiring musicians.  This was completely foreign to me.  I never had an interest in learning to play a musical instrument and knew nothing about the various types of guitars and believe me, there are quite a few.  My son, Elijah immediately engaged with a sales person and they set him up with a guitar within his said price range, hooked it up to an amp and walked away and allowed him to just play.  He was in pure bliss as he caressed the body of this beautifully finished guitar and moved his fingers along the spine creating sounds I immediately recognized from an old Rolling Stone's song. 

He looked up at me with this million dollar smile and it made me remember those delicious little smiles of his when he was 2 and 3 years of age.  It was a pretty special moment.  I could see he was truly enjoying the moment and now just enveloping himself in the making of music with this guitar.  The sale man had brought two others for him to try.  This was his time, and I didn't want to rush him in any way.  But I had little I could add to the conversation of picking a guitar other than "this one is pretty!"  So I told to take his time and sample a few, I was just going to look around.

I immediately began to notice how beautiful these instruments were!  There were wonderful lines and shapes all around me.  Armed with my trusty iPhone, I decided that it might be a nice way to pass the time and document this pretty cool first for my son.  It brought memories back of when I used to shoot every waking moment of him, especially in his first two years.  But I didn't want to pester while he was enjoying his time playing.  So I focused on the shapes that caught my eye.

I loved what I was finding and saw the art and attention to detail that went into these instruments.  It made it easier to understand why some of these were over a few thousand dollars.  At every turn, I saw a photo opportunity

That's when it dawned on me that there are photo opportunities ALL THE TIME!!  Most of us, myself included, become desensitized by our surrounding and just take them for granted.  We just walk, drive, text past beauty around all the time.  I looked around to see if anyone else was appreciating how gorgeous some of these instruments were.  Those that were playing an instrument were completely submersed in the music they were making.  While other 'co-pilots' like me were busy checking their Facebook status.  "Wow" I thought, it was disheartening to witness others not taking in what was so prominently in front of them!

 
It made me realize that I was very fortunate to have made this simple, yet overwhelmingly overlooked insight.  I was happy to be there in the moment, and finding a way to share with my son that I know he will appreciate years from now when he looks at these images and recalls the day we went shopping for his first guitar.  He'll remember the sheen from the finishes of the guitars, the wonderful curves and grain of the wood.

Plus I was able to sneak in a shot of him jamming to the one he gravitated to most!

Carry your camera, life happens at every turn and it's beautiful!