My bright ideas just aren't panning out today. It started at work. I had a therapy client who pretty much refused to talk to me. I spent the first 20 minutes asking millions of questions trying to get somewhere, to no avail. I asked if he wanted to talk about anything at all, and he said no. I asked if he wanted to leave, and he said no. That left one option: sit in silence for the remainder of the session. So I told him so. Because, of course, that would teach him a lesson, right? He'd see that he was being irrational and wasteful, right? He'd begin to take responsibility for his treatment, right? Wrong. We sat in silence for 40 minutes. It was a long day, needless to say.
After work and dinner, of course, it was time for today's photo challenge. The theme was "favorite place," and I had given it some thought. I have a lot of favorite places in the world: the swing on my parents' back porch, the front porch of the old farm house I lived in in college... Look! A pattern! Porches. So I decided to photograph my favorite local porch, the one at the yacht club. I had it all composed in my head; I knew what angle I was going to shoot from and where I was going to position the rocking chair. When I got there, though, there were people everywhere. They were in the way of my intended shot, and I was too embarrassed to be moving furniture around for a picture in front of everyone anyway. I gave up and walked a couple of miles up and down the beach with my camera instead. I took a lot of pictures of egrets and the sunset and so forth, and it was a lot more enjoyable than that crowded porch. I decided that the beach itself is one of my favorite places, especially when I have my camera in hand. So I took a picture of a stranger who seems to agree.
I wanted to capture her looking through the viewfinder, but I didn't want her to spot me photo-stalking her, so this is all I could muster. I don't hate it. It might even be better than the porch picture I had in my head.