Sweet Shot Tuesday—”Under the Hood”

Posted On March 23, 2010

I’m not a photographer, but I play one on TV my blog.

I even have a decent camera, a Sony Super SteadyShot with 5.1 mega pixels and a 12x zoom. Despite the “steady” part of its name, my unblurry-to-blurry ratio is about 1/10. I’ve tried to read the manual, but I still have no idea what most of the settings do. (Did I mention that I’ve had this for about 5 years?) I just pick an icon that looks intriguing, turn the little knob, take a picture—and then see how it turns out. Which is usually either too dark, too blurred from movement, or focused on something other than what I was intending to shoot.

But in spite of my complete lack of talent, I love taking photos. And although I’m a word girl by nature, there are times that I just can’t find the right syllables to put together to express what I feel, or what I see. And sometimes—if the stars are all aligned, the sun is shining at the precisely perfect angle overhead, the blinking from the red-eye feature hasn’t forced my subject into convulsions, and the caffeine has not yet made its way through my veins to give my hands the jitters—I can say it all with one magical click.

So I usually don’t showcase my photos. But when I read about Sweet Shot Tuesday, launched by my friend and fellow DesMoinesian boy-mom Darcy from My Life with 3 Boybarians, I knew this was something in which I could participate. I heard Darcy speak at iBlog last fall, and she totally inspired me because she said that you don’t have to have a fancy camera or a lot of photographic gizmos to take beautiful photos—and she shared some amazing tips. (She and her husband also have a successful photography business, as well as Graphically Designing, an amazing design business.)

So here’s my first entry in Sweet Shot Tuesday. There are no big themes or rules to enter, but Darcy encourages participants to choose a shot that was taken in the past week. Just like writing, the key to getting better at taking photos is to just do it—as often as you can!

Here’s the story behind my photo this week: My father-in-law is amazing. Seriously, I don’t know what we would do without him. He has worked as a mechanic for the National Guard both as a member and a civilian nearly his entire life. The man knows everything there is to know about anything under the hood of any type of vehicle. His current project (off-duty) is our van. He’s like a scientist, gathering evidence, formulating a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis, and finally reaching a reasonable conclusion about source of problem, cause, and suggested course of action. (And he never charges for labor!) My husband, however, did not inherit his father’s mechanical genes. He can’t even change his own oil. (It’s okay, honey, you have many other talents.) So we’re banking on Boy #1 to learn all he can from his grandpa to ensure that someone can take over after Papa’s no longer able to wield a wrench.

See more Sweet Shot Tuesday entries at Life with My 3 Boybarians!