popinjay

I left this, our junior snowman, with his carrot nose and broccoli eyes and smile, for a moment to get my camera.

Sneaking a Snack

For the weekly Popinjay Challenge. This week's word: free.

I have not been able to keep up with Michelle's weekly Popinjay Photo Challenge, but I'm able to pop in every once in a while (knee slap for that pun, please).

This week's word: Guilty

Two things occurred to bring together this photo:

1. I gave my husband a Nikon D40 for Christmas (actually, several family members went in with me to give it to him). I (mostly) gave him the camera because he always finds creative shots and loves playing with the settings of our simple point-and-shoot for the best picture. If he produces unusual pictures now with limited settings, I can't wait for the photos he'll find with all the bells and whistles. But I also gave him this because I wanted to play with it. Yes, I know. I've opened the door to getting an HDTV for my next birthday gift.

2. Michelle started a new photo challenge called Popinjay. I won't spell out the details (you can see them here), but this week's word is hope.

Now, on to the picture itself.  

I chose a mailbox. At summer camp, my muscles jittered at mail call. And who doesn't look through the stack of bills and junk mail with some semblance of hope of a real letter, or at least a Netflix DVD? Also, I wanted to get the mailbox from a child's perspective. 

You'll notice that the mailbox is dirty, old, simple, and leaning to one side. I knew this was the perfect mailbox when I saw it. It's not about the mailbox itself. The mailbox is the conduit for the real hope--brown paper packages tied up with string.

It's a simple shot, but I took dozens of photos of this mailbox (because I wanted to play around with all these magical settings--in some cases my camera yelled at me, like when I tried to make it have a large aperture with bright sunlight; Too much light! it said, or something to that effect). I wonder what the neighbors thought of me as I snapped away. Stalker?

And, yes, I know you're not supposed to take pictures into the sunlight, but I liked the bit of haze the sunlight gave the mailbox.