Photo finish

So I went out of town for a few days but left my computer charging cord at home and ran down the battery trying to edit some butterfly photos I took in my daughter's wonderful front garden, but my camera is failing in a variety of ways and my editing software is so old that it couldn't get installed on my new laptop so I had to use clunky software I'm not familiar with and it made the whole joyful process of taking and editing photos miserable. Which is why I've posted nothing here for a week. So sue me. Some battles are worth fighting and some simply are not.

The next challenge, of course, is to pick out a new camera. I can take photos on mine but that's about it: I can't view or edit or even delete them without going through a massive annoying rigamarole. My Nikon has provided loyal service for eight years, but I've carried it into wet, messy environments and dropped it more than once, so it doesn't surprise me that it's malfunctioning. No one is repairing SLR cameras these days and buying a new camera will require getting up to speed on the mirrorless options, many of which look big and bulky and (gulp!) expensive. I mean, really expensive. I suppose the price ranges are proportional to what I paid for my Nikon eight years ago, but the number of digits in the price makes me nervous about making an expensive mistake.

I could stick with my cell-phone camera, but frankly, cell-phone photography does not provide the pleasure I've always received from the feel of an SLR camera in my hands. Years ago when I was a struggling journalist and a painfully shy person, I found that I could walk into any environment and speak to anyone as long as I had my camera around my neck.  It was a sort of badge of belonging, an antidote for the imposter syndrome that crippled me in so many situations. 

These days, photography requires me to get off my butt and away from my computer, to look closely at the world around me and seek out different perspectives. Facebook memories crop up to remind me that I've taken photos of the same scenes and situations over and over, but while the photos may be similar, the experience remains fresh each time. I've taken hundreds of butterfly photos over the years, but the one I take today will provide just as much pleasure as all the preceding photos.

So I'm looking for a new camera, reading online reviews and talking to photography friends, seeking advice in hopes of avoiding an expensive mistake, and I'm trying to silence the tiny Puritans in my brain who think it's frivolous to spend so much money on myself. "It's cheaper than therapy," I'll tell them, and if they won't shut up, maybe I can distract them with some butterfly pix.