Kiteless

For the moment I'm kiteless. But for once that's no bad thing. The trade winds have been howling, it's been spitting or dumping rain depending on the time of day, and it's uncomfortably cold for someone who's not used to wearing anything but shorts and a T-shirt. Nope! Not missing the kites just yet.

But it's giving me time to research locations for the trip. The problem isn't finding places to photograph. Quite the opposite. I'm having a hard time narrowing things down. There are just so many places to photograph where we're going! Even the one trip out to the boonies is going to yield some outstanding opportunities to photograph old farm equipment, decaying buildings, and stream beds. And with the serendipitous nature of KAP, I can't wait to find out what I didn't know about, and what hidden bounties the camera will reveal.

The real issue is that this isn't a KAP trip. It's a family trip. We're visiting the mainland in order to spend time with family we haven't seen in over five years. I can't spend the whole trip grabbing a kite line and staring at the sky. Nor would I want to. And it's not just that I'd disappoint them. I want to see them, too!

But I hope there's some time to indulge, and maybe share in the madness. Most of the places I want to go should be fun for everyone else as well. There are parks, gardens, museums, libraries (yes, libraries are photogenic some of the time), at least two college campuses, and numerous pieces of outdoor sculpture. If the weather is right there's even the opportunity to go hiking in a stream bed that abounds with dinosaur footprint fossils. What kid doesn't like dinosaurs?

The part that's got me down isn't so much what I can look forward to during the trip. It's what awaits when I get back. I know I live in one of the more photogenic parts of the world. Small islands in the middle of the Pacific tend to be that way. But I see far fewer opportunities to do KAP here than I do in the middle of a city on the mainland. I hope this is just my perception of reality rather than reality itself. I can change my perception. I want to change my perception if it leads to new opportunities to take pictures from the air. But what if I'm right and the vistas really are limited?

I'm not egotistical enough to believe I'll run out of things to photograph. That's simply not the nature of things. But will I still feel challenged enough to want to? Will I start to describe my own pictures as "yet another example of..."? Scary thoughts for a photographer, even an amateur.

What I hope is that the opposite happens. I photograph the buildings, the parks, the stream beds, the gardens, and everything else I can find while we're there, but realize by leaving this island I've lost the opportunity to photograph subjects I'm not even consciously thinking about. When I return, I hope I've made a new list of places to go and photographs to take: places here, where I live. I hope the trip is revitalizing rather than depressing. Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile the wind is still howling, the rain is still spitting, and my KAP gear is still sitting in a box, hopefully well on its way.

Tom