hell-fire and damnation

It serves me right.  We’re up early to take Chris to Heathrow.  I debate whether or not to take my camera with me.  Decide not.  You-know-who takes hers though.

We take the country route home and find ourselves parked at the side of the road while Anniemay takes a photo of the ancient building in West Wycombe that once housed the Hellfire Club in the 1760s.  

We have nothing to rush home for so decide to climb up the steep hill to take a closer look.  It’s about halfway up when I stop to catch my breath and look back across the Chilterns, that I start to kick myself.  My lovely wife offers up hers as a means of me recording the glorious countryside.  I start with her iPhone.  What a ridiculous thing; squint, stab stab, and I record a video.  What the ???

I know people can make wonderful images with an iPhone.  I’m not one of them.

Her compact is not much better.  Can’t see a thing on the rear screen.  Point and pray.  I’m clearly not an arm’s length photographer.  By now I’m quite grumpy.

I manage to find a spot under a shady tree and then find that I’ve inadvertently switched on the digital tele-convertor which means it won’t zoom out and I can’t move back far enough without stepping on someone’s grave.  Because unbeknownst to us, there’s a graveyard right at the top of the hill.

I go through the menus more times than someone who’s not eaten out since the 1950s and missed the whole sharing platters and pulled-pork revolution. 

I finally take a shot and then pack it in. That's it.  If you want to see what it's supposed to look like, see here.