Photographs Lost, Part 1

     Two-and-a-half years  ago while Tom and I were  in Spain walking our first Camino de Santiago de Compostela (see "Tighten Your Boots"  at  www.pattiliszkay.weebly.com) I bought a new camera at El Corte Ingles,

...a beautiful 8-story department store,

...in the beautiful city of Leon,

 ... after my old camera plotzed about halfway through our trip. 

My new Spanish camera- not so new anymore in this picture - was a little pink Canon that took nice pictures.

Tom and I in a try-out photo taken by the salesperson in the camera department of El Corte Ingles.

    For the rest of the trip and the next two-and-a half years my little pink Canon was like an extension of my hand.  I never went anywhere, not even for a walk around the block, without my camera. 
     And I've taken thousands of pictures during that time, many of which have shown up on my blog.
     In fact I'll admit that my writing is often inspired by whatever photos I have at hand, and my main weapon for fighting my chronic and ubiquitous writer's block is looking at the pictures I've taken of whatever I want to write about, one picture being, if not worth a thousand words, maybe a couple hundred at least. 
     But about halfway through Tom's and my second Camino walk last fall (see "...And Lighten Your Pack"  at www.andlightenyourpack.com) the zoom-out on my camera seemed to be malfunctioning as grey spots would often show up on magnified shots,  ruining what would have been some really awesome scenes:  

     Some tiny, gritty-looking  particles were visible on the lens of my camera and I figured these must be the culprits.  It was a couple of weeks before we arrived at a town big enough to have a camera shop where I hoped to get the lens cleaned, but the technician at the shop where I finally took my camera told me that the problem was not on the lens but inside the lens.  Apparently dirt had gotten lodged inside the lens,

,...my fault, no doubt, since  I kept my camera naked in my pocket as I hiked along the sometimes dusty Camino,

...and taking the camera apart would cost more than the  90 euros I'd paid for it.
     So I figured I'd do the best I could with my now-annoying - yet somehow still beloved  -  little camera, and buy a new one when I got back to the States.
     Yet after I returned home my intention to buy a new camera remained merely an intention. 
     See, I wanted to buy a better camera than my little Canon, but how much better a one I needed I wasn't sure. So I guess it was a combination of  indecision, lack of knowledge, not feeling like doing the research to educate myself, and how much easier it was to bee-atch about my camera wrecking my shots than to do something about it, that left me in a protracted state of inertia.  Hence I continued to use my aggravating little pink camera.
      But then one day about three  months ago while grocery shopping at Meijer's I made an impulse-turn down the electronics aisle to the camera section where I sought the assistance of the salesperson, a post-adolescent youngster who appeared to know as little about cameras as I did.  So I thought, aw, heck and just pointed to a black Canon camera behind the glass display case,  $215.99 reduced to $149.99, figuring that if it had to be locked behind a glass case it must be good.

     Besides, this camera did look rather fancier and more involved than my old pink Canon.
    You'll note that in this photo my new camera has not yet really been taken out of the box.
    In truth,  I opened the box for the first time a few minutes ago to take this photo.  I bought this camera  back in April.

   My point being, I procrastinated for 6 months before I bought a new camera then procrastinated for 2 months more before I took it out of the box because I didn't feel like reading the instruction manual.  In truth I still don't feel like reading the instruction manual.  But now I'm in  crisis mode, which, sadly, is too often what it takes to get me motivated to get anything done.
      But if  only I had procrastinated for one week less,  if I had pulled out my new camera and sat down with the instruction manual one week sooner and started using my black Canon  before my pink Canon, already banged and battered by my cavalier klutziness, had entered its death spiral last weekend during a visit to mother, then surely I wouldn't have fallen into the camera-panic that caused me to take the impulsive - and, ultimately foolish - action that caused me to lose every photograph I've taken over the past year, over 7,000 irreplaceable pictures.
To be continued.