I Should Get A Proper Camera First

There was a minute on Saturday and you watched it.

The light was doing something on the wall and the two of them were on the floor in it, and one of them said something and the other one did that laugh, and it went on for about a minute.

And you had your phone in your pocket the whole time.

You did not take it out. It was not a decision you made in words, it was more a small quiet judgment that arrived and settled the matter: not with this. That moment deserves better than this.

So you watched it instead, and it was lovely, and it is gone.

You have been going to get a proper camera for about three years.

You have looked into it. You know what you would get, roughly, and you know approximately what it would cost, and it has been on the edge of happening for long enough that you no longer really expect it to happen this year either.

And in the meantime you have not been taking photographs. Not the way you would if you had one. There is a whole category of picture you do not take at all, and it is the category you care about most, because those are the ones you would want to be good.

I am not going to talk about equipment.

Not about what your phone can or cannot do, not about what a camera would give you, and I am not going to tell you that gear does not matter. That is its own conversation and it belongs somewhere else, and every version of it I have read ends with somebody being told they are wrong about what they want.

You may well get a camera one day and you may love it. This article has no opinion.

What this article does is remove the wait.

What is that in thine hand

There is a question in Exodus that God asks a man who is explaining why he is not equipped.

And the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. (Exodus 4:2, King James Version)

What is that in thine hand.

Moses has been listing his inadequacies. They will not believe me. I am not eloquent. I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. Send somebody else. It is a long passage and every objection in it is about not having what the job requires.

And God interrupts the list with a question about an object he is already holding.

What is that in thine hand?

A rod. A stick. The thing a shepherd carries, worn smooth, entirely ordinary, so unremarkable that he has not thought to mention it in a conversation about his own inadequacy. It is not a special item. There were tens of thousands like it.

And that is what gets used.

Now notice what does not happen. God does not give him a better one. There is no upgrade in that scene, no equipping with something more appropriate, no promise of a proper staff once he has proved himself with this one. The rod he already has is the answer to the question.

And notice the shape of the question, because it is doing something particular. Moses is looking forward, at what he lacks. The question turns him downward, to his own hand, to what is already there.

That is your Saturday.

You were looking at what you did not have and you did not look at what was in your pocket. And the thing in your pocket makes photographs. That is what it is for and that is what it does, and it was there the whole time.

The question turns you to what is already in your hand, and what you are holding has never once been disqualified for being ordinary. Exodus 4:2 uses the rod the man was already carrying and offers no better one, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who watched a minute go by with a phone in his pocket.

The moment is not waiting

Here is the practical half, and it is about what the waiting actually costs.

The moment was not going to happen again on better equipment.

That is the thing the small judgment on Saturday did not account for. It felt like a deferral: not with this, meaning later, properly. But there is no later for that minute. Those two on the floor in that light are not going to reassemble when you are better prepared.

So the choice was never between a poor photograph and a good one. It was between a poor photograph and nothing, and you chose nothing, and you chose it because a better version existed in your head.

And here is the arithmetic over three years, which is worth facing.

There is no photograph from Saturday. There is also no photograph from the equivalent minute in the spring, or the one at your brother's, or the one on the stairs that you still think about. Every one of those was deferred to a camera that has not arrived.

Three years of deferred moments is not a small holding position. It is a gap in the record of your family, and it was created entirely by the intention to do it properly.

And the standard you are applying is one you apply to nothing else in your life. You do not decline to make a meal because you do not have the right pan. You do not refuse to write the note because the pen is cheap.

Only here, and only because you care about it, which is the cruel part: the caring is what produced the gap.

The moment was never waiting for better equipment, and the choice has never once been between a poor picture and a good one. The written word puts the ordinary thing already in a man's hand to work with no upgrade attached, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody whose caring has produced a three year gap.

Three today, and keep all three

So here is the assignment, and the last part is the one that does the work.

Take three photographs today with your phone and keep all three.

Three. Today. Of whatever is actually in front of you: somebody at the table, the dog on the floor, the light on the wall if it does that again.

Do not set anything up. Do not wait for a better moment during the day. Take them when you notice something, which is exactly when you would have taken them if you already had the camera.

And keep all three.

That is the instruction, and it will be harder than taking them.

Because you will look at them and two of them will not be what you saw. That is normal and it happens to everybody with any equipment, and your instinct will be to delete, and the deleting is the same judgment as Saturday arriving after the fact instead of before it.

Keep them anyway. All three. Even the one that is clearly wrong.

Here is why that matters. A photograph that is not very good still contains the room, the day, the person, and what they were wearing, and in fifteen years that is most of what anybody wants from it. The blurred one of your daughter laughing is not a failed portrait. It is the only existing record of an afternoon.

Nobody looking through these in twenty years will assess your technique. They will look for the people, and a poor photograph delivers the people completely.

And do it again tomorrow if you want to, or do not. There is nothing to keep up here. Today is three, and then you have three more than Saturday produced.

You are able to keep the one that did not come out, and a poor photograph has never once failed to deliver the people in it. Exodus 4:2 asks what is in the hand and uses that, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody keeping all three.