I am a recovering addict. For several years, I carried a camera with me every single place I went, and shot photos of every person or thing that occupied dimensional space. I was ever concerned that something might happen out in the world, and I wouldn't be able to remember it without photos. In recent years I've scaled back; I now carry a point-and-shoot in my laptop bag instead of my full D80 rig, and on some choice occasions I've ventured forth without any camera on me at all. (The shitty camera phone doesn't count; I almost never use it.)
It works and it doesn't. I'm shifting the lens of my cognitive abilities back towards the retention of people, places and events through writing, which is what I'm supposed to be doing in the first place. (I only got into photography to give me something to do when my writing gets stuck.) Friends who never knew I that I made my living as a writer have begun to read the stuff I do for money, and the stream of requests to photograph weddings and the like is thinning out (though I still consider every request). I'm beginning to trust myself to remember things without photographing them from every angle.
And yet, if I hadn't had a camera with me on an August, 2001 trip to a Henderson, Nevada TGI Fridays franchise -- the last time I visited a TGI Fridays, I think -- I wouldn't have caught the pictured mini-monsoon at its peak. It lasted scarcely a minute, barely a drop of time in an ocean of memories. But I did bring the camera, and I can look at this photo and remember the sudden, violent fury of Las Vegas rainstorms -- the house-shaking explosions of thunder, the fingers of lightning digging into the earth, the streets and parking lots flooding within seconds. Seattle doesn't get rainstorms like that, and I do miss the destructive beauty of desert rains. They can even make the patio of a TGI Fridays look somehow romantic.
You get bonus points if you get the double-reference of the title.
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