Took my work camera to Independence with me this weekend to try and get used to using it a little. I've been playing around with it for several days now & noticed it had a "Fireworks" setting on it that was supposed to help you take great shots of a fireworks display. Decided to try it out at our annual Ediger family festivities at my Dad's house. You can check out the results (at least the pictures that turned out halfway decent) in the gallery. I honestly have not been trying to have some deep & profound "thought of the every-other-day" thing going on here, so forgive me if a delve in a little deeper to some thoughts I had this morning (I promise I won't do this everyday) ... I said that I was going to try & get used to my work camera during the trip this weekend. "Try" is probably the right word for it, as I still don't really know what I'm doing with it. As long as there is good light & the surroundings are perfect, I could probably take a decent shot in "Automatic" mode. Switch the camera to "Manual" and I've lost total control. Learning some basic photography skills & how to take good pictures is a life goal of mine - something that I'd like to do after we buy a nice camera some day & have a little time. For know I am forced to 'tinkering' - which is not the best way to learn these things.

At best I was able to capture a portion of the fireworks 'burst' in the corner of the frame in a shot. It was tricky figuring out where the explosion was going to take place in the sky, hitting the 'trigger' at the right time on the camera, and then keeping the camera steady for the 3-4 seconds that the shutter was open so that I wouldn't get a total blurry image. The results were that I had to delete about half of the shots I took, and the others are not as good as I hoped. The worst part was that I found myself missing the real thing this morning. I realized that I had settled for the 4th of July through the eyes of the camera lens (and even more - a camera in the hands of an inexperienced photographer like myself).

The night display is the thing that I probably look forward to the most each year, and all I have to account for it is a bunch of mediocre images. I woke up this morning wanting to see the real thing - wishing I could hit rewind on my life, go back about 12 hours & do it over again. Instead, I'll have to wait a year to redeem it all. What's more - I realized that I do the same thing so many times in my life. I settle for what I think is going to be good, only to wind up feeling like it was only mediocre in the face of God's best for me. Regret ... wanting to turn back the clock & make amends ... only being able to wait until next time, hoping to choose more wisely.

No grand finale. No great revelation of how you can insure that you won't make the same mistake. Just a reflection on a portion of a holiday missed and my own inability to choose wisely a lot of the time. I need Him - realizing who I am & my defiencies pushes me to realize my need for a great God even more.