Today, something kind of weird happened to me. I left Clark College around 5:30 and headed over to the Vancouver Public Library, where I was covering a public forum on increased coal train traffic in the northwest. I'd checked out a camera from the newsroom, but let's be honest, I have absolutely no goddamn experience with photography. That being said, I started taking pictures as soon as I got there. It began with me taking a few test shots to try and find good angles for the story's pictures, but quickly turned into something else. I realized that I was actually having a lot of fun taking the photos, probably more fun than I had reporting on the event. Anyways, I left the library when the forum ended around 8:00. After I walked out onto the street, however, I had the urge to start taking snapshots of everything around me, because behind the lens, everything immediately seemed more interesting. I photographed random people on the street, various buildings that I walked past downtown, a fire engine responding to a call, and even the traffic on I-5 with the bridge in the background. I really think that I'm developing a taste for photography, even though my pictures aren't very good yet. But I'm not gonna let the quality of my pictures from today bring me down, because something way more awesome overshadowed all that. When I left Clark today, the camera's memory card was empty. When I walked through the door to my house 4 hours later, I had 294 pictures, and the only thing that disappointed me was that I didn't take more.
