Portents: An illustrated story

This account comes with pictures, but a lot of them won't be very good pictures.

They were taken when, on this warm Summer morning, I went out for my regular, hour-long picture taking neighborhood journey. I warmed myself up photographing some lilies that were blooming profusely along a sidewalk running down towards the river. I soon found that I had accidentally set my camera to a mode where instead of taking one picture it takes 32 pictures over the course of two seconds. 

That's a lot of pictures to delete! 

It's not my favorite thing to do as a photographer, but it might be what I do the most: delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

So I deleted the 32 pictures. Well, I took two unsatisfactory pictures of the lilies, so there were 64 pictures to delete. 

That's why I don't have any pictures of lilies to show you. Although yesterday I took a picture of a lily that had just been watered. 




I'll show you that:

Not too bad, huh? I mean it's pretty and more or less in focus. That's because I deleted the other 72 I took that didn't turn out... quite... so... right.

Anyway, I stopped in the shade, and I figured out how to get my camera back to its normal one-picture-at-a-time picture taking.

I now had zero pictures on my camera, of which I have managed to show you one, which isn't too bad a trick if I say so myself.



And then I saw a bunny. 




But not just any bunny, a little bunny! A cute bunny.

You might be surprised how rare that really is. They can get a little... rodenty. So I was excited. I have found everyone likes a good bunny picture. Me included. Maybe even especially me included.



In a minute I am going to show you the one not very good bunny picture I took.








I took off my lens cap and crouched in the grass off the sidewalk. The bunny let me come super close. I moved slowly and carefully. And before zooming in much, or steadying as I need to for zoom focusing, or properly setting up, I took an establishing shot, an orientation shot so to speak. Here it is:

I had no illusions this would turn into a particularly good picture. It didn't. But what with the babyness of the bunny, and his stillness, I was having a very good feeling. "I am going to get some really nice bunny pictures!" I thought very excitedly. 



So I perfected my zoom, adjusted my angle, held the lens for stability, and



SOMEONE WALKED DOWN THE SIDEWALK!




The bunny got scared and ran into the deep bushes.

I sighed.

"I don't think this is going to be a very good day." I thought sadly. 

It was a portent.

I can recognize a portent when it comes along. 

This was a portent.




But I had nothing else to do but meet my fate. So I did. 



I took a right at the corner and headed up the hill towards the fairy houses and the fulfillment of my doom.

Halfway up the hill was a cat. He came running to meet me. 

He was friendly!

As you can see I did take some pictures of him, but mostly I petted him and hung out with him. 



Here is a distinguished portrait of him so you will know his true, noble nature:

Maybe all that with the bunny wasn't a portent after all?

Maybe everything is a portent?






I thought about it while I took pictures of flowers.

Then it was time to head home.




I thought some more about portents until I had worked out a blog post about them. At which point...









There were turkeys...

They were in someone's backyard where I couldn't go, and so I didn't get the best pictures of them, but that really isn't the point, is it?



The point is:


Of course there are portents!

There are almost too many portents!

So if you get a dark portent, hold on. 

Hold on. A brand new portent should be coming along just about...


now.