We often, on our daily constitutional (in better weather than present), walk past a little pond filled (at that time of year) with cattails. However, they don’t look to me like a cat’s tail at all. And, they don’t flick inquisitively as a cat’s tail does. To me, they more resemble a beaver’s tail after it’s been forced thru a knothole. Cat tail? No. If I were to come upon a critter with a tail like that, it’d accompany some soothing self-talk and maintaining eye contact while backing away slowly.
Anyways, I was thinking of taking a picture of one of those. As we passed them one day, I remarked aloud “hey, those look like corn dogs, they’re even on a stick!” Must have been around lunchtime. So, why did God make these plants (which for some reason are referred to as cattails) look so much like corn dogs!?! What fun though, and what an exposition of God’s sense of humor. My wife is continually pointing out His sense of humor (and most particularly, and most often) when in the presence of a dog .. any dog … she loves dogs.
At any rate, I decided to take a few shots of a “cattail”. For some reason, the notion cried-out to me for square format (don’t ask), so I chose to lug my 2 1/4” camera on the walk. I have an 80mm and a 135mm lens… the 135 I figured, in hopes of keeping depth-of-field shallow, as-well-as my feet dry.
Several days later: ok, I developed the film … a disaster. Here’s the problem of being a peripatetic artist: some of the activities are done so rarely that an efficient and quality level of ability is hard to maintain. In this case, I mis-loaded the film in my tanks and ruined it. I have done 2 1/4” so rarely, I’m just not competent with it these days (note: I once was very good at 120/220 processing … a while back though). Rather than fight it, I’m going to re-shoot 35mm … where I’m very comfortable and confident. I need to get them shot while they’re still in good shape.
Bummer.
I’ll end with a personal sidebar on cattails: my wife once created a very pretty bouquet of dried grasses and a couple cattails in our family room. Very nice. However, month’s later, the cattails apparently burst open – I assume in a natural manner so-as to propagate – setting aloft hundreds of little feathery, light-as-air seed poofs. I still find one here, one there … everywhere, when dusting. Cattails explode – who knew?
Double bummer.
otcarts.com 