Check out the weekly WordPress Photo Challenge for more great images!

refraction: the change of direction of a ray of light, sound, heat, or the like, in passing obliquely from one medium into another in which its wave velocity is different.

[I read that definition about 16 times and kept getting lost at ‘obliquely‘. They might as well have used the word oblongitudinal or trigonomical.]

I’m finding my way with photography. It’s a beautiful thing, this marriage between your eye and the camera. Sometimes we fight. Surprisingly, I’m usually the one complaining: Hey Camera, why’d you place that tree limb directly behind their head? You made them look like a human shish kabob. But then I laugh, because I enjoy Camera’s dark sense of humor.

When I took the above photo with my iPhone, I pretty much shot straight into the sun. All I did was frame the sun, completely ignoring what was lurking in the shadows. When I got home, I lifted the veil a bit on the photo.

Do you ever feel like you are rewarded with something surprisingly beautiful when you review your photos? What about when you enhance and/or crop them to tell a certain story, convey a mood? Or perhaps you don’t have to do anything at all and it speaks for itself. This is what I love about taking photos. It gives me great joy to uncover something I didn’t know was there. I like being surprised (in a nice way, not a hiding-behind-my-bedroom-door kind of way).

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I know what I’m doing. I prefer not to know too much about photography except for the very basics. As you might have guessed from my difficulty with that rascally word ‘obliquely’, my mind starts to spin at the mention of ISOs, apertures and shutter speed. Whenever I tell people this, they try their best to explain (very slowly) what these things mean, stopping only after my head falls off my neck and rolls underneath the coffee table. This disgusts them and eventually, they give up.

I’m taking a trip soon, but am only bringing along my point-and-shoot camera; I don’t feel like lugging around my borrowed DSLR, especially when it might rain everyday. I’m looking forward to some new scenery.

DSLR. I think that stands for Digital Single Lady Reflects. How lovely. (Please don’t correct me with the real definition. It’s the only way I can keep my head reattached long enough to finish this post.)