Since I was sixteen, except for some early years of marriage and impoverishment, I’ve always had my own car, even if it was a beater. But recently, I decided to sell my beloved hardtop/convertible (A very neat car … the best of all worlds!).  I did it for a couple of reasons. It wasn’t very practical which often meant I had to rent a car rather than leave my wife stranded without one. And with 16 mpg city/20 mpg highway and a hunger for premium it was costing a small fortune to keep running (The high octane stuff is now creeping toward $6.00 where I live unless I’m near a Costco).

So now we’re down to one car and I’m going to do my best to work it out with my wife so we can both be happy.  But it may not always be possible to schedule who gets it when, time I’d be gone, etc. The easy thing to do would be to buy a Prius or an all-electric vehicle … sorry not a Tesla for some obvious reasons you may think of. That means for the time being I’m going to try to make this work out despite the psychological hit I seem to be taking … my rugged individualism and independence … that sort of thing.

The key question is what will this do to my photography?  Well the short answer is not much. Why? Because I’m not going to let it!

The easy thing would be to dial things back or only photograph really nearby. While focusing primarily on what is really close might actually be a good thing for a variety of reasons, I’m just not going to let that happen. If anything, now that my car is gone, I’m going to move ahead without it being a diversion in my life that it had become, work hard to schedule things with my wife and just rent a car whenever I need one. It’s really pretty simple when you think about it.

Well, there is one reoccurring problem that seems to be popping up in the new world order. Our remaining car … my wife’s … is very nice, but very complicated … at least for me.  No surprise there!  Every setting has been set up perfectly to suit her needs and believe me I don’t want to get in the way of that. It’s got a lot of faux buttons on the very large touch screen that serves as the center of all things. So here’s a newsflash … despite my best intentions, I’ve somehow managed to screw things up several times.

Toleration probably has its limits so I’ll try to be better … I promise.

So what would this kind of change to your life do to your photography?

There’s always an excuse you can find not to get out there … like getting rid of your car. Don’t fall for them!

Stay well,

Michael