Just a Glance

Do you ever wish you had a camera with you that you could instantly use when the perfect thing happens right in front of you, sort of like a "print screen" button for your life? I mean, I do.

Tonight was a perfect example. It was all about composition, really. I was walking back home from a trip to the Meadows building and I had with me an empty cardboard cup of coffee. Nonchalantly, as is a habit of mine, I was flipping the cup into the air, giving it a really nice spin. It's an activity I do when I'm walking places. Well, at any rate, I was tossing the cup pretty high up and so I was required to look up to ensure that I could catch it. On one toss, I looked up and saw a lovely compositional photograph! I'll attempt to describe it:

So we've got a backdrop of dark indigo night sky accented by thin cloud cover and five or so dots of starlight. A light cyan glow creates the left side and a sharp angled line of brick colored a warm red dominates the right side. At the bottom left a fresh, green branch shoots up vertically, and at the middle left is the blurry form of my spinning cup. Finally, right above the cup a moth zips by, catching the light with his white wings and creating a delicate horizontal streak through the sky.

It sounds nice, right? I thought so. All of those elements just came together for a split second to create that image and I say it and immediately regretted that I couldn't capture it right then and there. It was pleasantly startling because of the moth, which I first took to be a shooting star. If anything, it just corroborated the desire I often have to carry my camera with me always. But even then, you've gotta drag the thing out and turn it on and get it ready, and then focus and take the picture. I mean, by then the unscripted, beautiful life moment has long since passed by (usually). I'll just have to remember those glimpses of beautiful composition in my mind only. Until a mind-controlled optical camera is invented, that is.