Ever since Easter moms physical condition had deteriorated. Wanting to spend more time with her, I no longer felt comfortable traveling great distances on my days off photographing, so I preferred staying close to home so I could photograph for the first half of the day, when mom preferred to be left attended to the nursing home staff, and then spend as much time as was needed attending to mom's various growing needs at night when staff coverage was sparse.
Snug Harbor certainly fit the bill for locations as not only did I not have to leave the island, I barely had to leave my neighborhood. With so much of my time spent on mom I had little time to capture the colorful scenes of the spring that she loved so much to see. I would print out my pictures for her, and then put up the 11x17 or 13x19's on her wall for all those in the nursing home to see and chat with her about. So I wanted to give her a new batch that she hadn't seen yet as she was often asking me for new ones to display (they were great conversation starters for all those who walked by and mom loved the extra company and attention they brought), and so that was one of my purposes for coming here today.
It was early in the afternoon, and I was headed towards the northern exit and the bus home. As I walked past the "White and Herb" gardens, I noticed way off in the distance to my right, a woman sitting on the lush green grass capturing the wonderful colors of the spring with her paintbrush. Stopping in my tracks I turned and heading towards her. I watched as the constant breezes sent waves of movement flowing through the plastic sheets she was sitting on. I wanted to capture the rhythmic movement of the wind blowing through them but after several shots I could tell that I was never going to succeed capturing that effect with still photos, but I knew a good image was still there waiting to be captured none the less.
I switched the release mode on my D300 to 'silent release' so the sound of my camera wouldn't shatter the perfect peacefulness of this charming scene as I framed her up in my viewfinder (and how glad am I that Nikon included a silent shutter feature in this newest upgrade of this great camera model??). Her paintbrush filled fingers in her left hand as she painted with her right, was quite the perfect accent to this colorful april scene.
