Serendipity
ser·en·dip·i·ty
[ˌserənˈdipədē] NOUN, the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. This is what happens when you are in the right place at the right time and are cognizant enough to recognize that there is something that might work out well for you. That’s what happened with the painting, “A Flash From The Past.”
I was in a restaurant in southern Utah one evening when on my way out, I saw a shelf filled with old cameras hanging about six and a half feet up a wall. I was happy when I recognized some cameras on the shelf that I had used when I was younger. I love old things and I can wax nostalgic with the best of them. I wanted to ask if I could get a chair or a ladder to climb onto so that I could get some good photos of the set-up but I was hesitant to ask since I would have blocked an aisle to do so. The best I could think to do was to hold my phone high over my head, click a picture and hope it turned out.
As I walked out of the restaurant I was sure that the photo was going to be terrible and I would end up deleting it. I didn’t look at it until I got home a couple of days later after I put it on my computer. Low and behold, there it was all squared up with the shelf level and after I cropped it slightly, the center of attention, the box with the lights on the top was in the right spot for the composition.
Editing wasn’t turning out to be a problem either. Editing a painting is what it sounds like, the process of deciding what information is important and should be kept, what information is not important and therefore left out of the painting, and what things need to be changed. I simplified some things, took a few things out, and changed some colors. And, there it was. My chance encounter in a restaurant and camera phone held high over my head came together to give me the photo for this painting. Serendipity, I wish it happened more often.
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