Christy and I spent the day after Thanksgiving chuckling in derision and feeling superior to all those people who went shopping on the busiest day in the mall year. Then we turned around on Saturday morning and hit the stores before breakfast, seduced by all those % symbols in the ads and one Door Buster Special item in particular. All we encountered at that early hour were bleary-eyed salespersons straightening up from the previous day’s chaos, empty aisles, and more good deals than we could possibly take advantage of. We came home triumphant in the knowledge that we had bought wisely and generously, been a part of the national madness, taken time for relaxing with good coffee, and minutely examined every superfluous kitchen gadget on the planet. We even have several coupons left (cannot be used for Incredible Values, Bonus Buys, Yellow Dot Clearance Items, Door Busters, Morning Specials, or Super Buys) as souvenirs of the day.

Although some digital images are printed or posted online straight out of the camera, many photographers have a favorite workflow involving cropping and enhancements or adjustments of such characteristics as color balance, resolution, or sharpness. Not satisfied with this degree of post-processing, some enthusiasts attempt artistic treatments and in fact there are expensive programs dedicated to producing such “painterly” versions of digital images. Debate rages in online forums about what constitutes legitimate post-processing; purists often label experimentation “over the top” if not illegal and un-American, but the words retouching, restoration, enhancement, painting, and smudging have begun to overlap in meaning and the proponents of various methods of manipulating photos generally give each other space and respect. I admire the results many digital artists achieve and have begun timid experimentation myself. I don’t want my finished images to be too obvious or heavy-handed. How did I do on this Abraham Darby rose?

Ten days ago at the turkey farm out Ridge Road in Clarkson, there were hundreds of identical white turkeys milling about resignedly in their crowded pen. Little did they know that this week the fence would imprison nothing more than a few feathers stuck in the mud. But the turkeys pictured here are the kind that have the good sense to be afraid of people who get too close. They were wandering around the Green Acres apricot orchard at blueberry time, when there are always a lot of cars and people invading their space. They scurried a few yards, stopped to browse, almost took flight (they can fly), and stopped to snack again. Every time I got close enough to frame a shot, they took off. Actually, such flocks of wild turkeys are a pretty common sight here in western New York, including literally in our own back yard. I don’t know if people actually eat them, at least not when they can get a perfectly good frozen bird at Wegmans for 39 cents a pound.

Because our Pacific Northwest trip often took us to the very edge of North America, we were always watching for an ocean sunset—and we did see many glorious ones. Victoria, on Vancouver Island, has a pretty little harbor filled with tiny tugboats, mammoth ferries, and tall-masted sailboats, so it’s a magnet for photographers and sky-gazers. One evening, after taking a lot of pictures, I turned to face east toward the shops and saw this rosy reflection in a window. You can see the ghost of a staircase inside, but the colors of the sunset predominate as they soak even the masonry around the window. I always have a hurried internal debate, before pressing the shutter, about whether people improve a picture or are a distraction, so you can click here to make a comparison and draw your own conclusion.

I have to keep reminding myself that there’s plenty to see close to home if I just slow down and look around me. I always carry my camera with me, even on a quick jaunt to the grocery store, which is one reason I don’t want a fancy camera with lots of lenses and accessories. But I often see something intriguing and make a mental note to come back another time “when I’m not so busy,” and then of course I never do. On an apple-picking expedition this autumn, I had parked the car serendipitously where it caught the reflection of one part of the sky and had a beautiful backdrop of another cloud vista. It was one of those days when it had been raining endlessly and would start again soon, but there was a brief interlude of crisp clarity. I could probably go back there ten times and never recapture that perfect moment.

When our book discussion group met at Carole’s house this summer, we got talking about the poet Billy Collins (any friend of Garrison Keillor’s is a friend of hers). She brought out her books of his work and refused to serve dessert until we had each selected a poem to read aloud. It wasn’t hard to find good ones and we smiled in recognition of the situations and ideas he portrayed; it was a very satisfying exercise for compliant ex-teachers. Oh, and I made up the part about dessert. One of the poems I chose to read was Forgetfulness, greeted with rueful amusement by my—yes, it must be said—gently aging acquaintances. Last night I heard the same poem read to greater comic effect by Billy Collins himself at a Rochester Arts & Lectures event. The whole evening was full of cheer and connection, and no matter what might be said in hallowed halls about “serious” versus light and accessible poetry, every person in that audience surely dwelt in the Kingdom of Fan Club by the end. He began by saying that this would be just a reading of some poems rather than a lecture about his writing process, since asking a poet to engage in self-analysis is as futile as getting your dog to look in a mirror. Then he used brief comments about each poem to reveal its inspiration or underlying idea, in the process conveying more about his mode of thinking and working than I’ve heard in many years of attending such lectures. I like the slightly subversive nature of many of his poems: a sweet, familiar beginning image, followed by some startling notion that feels as though you’ve abruptly shifted into reverse in traffic and are getting in deeper, more hilarious trouble by the minute. I particularly remember Flock, The Rex Hotel, The Lanyard, and, putting cheap similes in their place, Litany.

In the unlikely event that any real photographer or artist is reading this, please skip this entry and come back tomorrow. Today I’m thinking about a baby step I’ve taken in what I consider beautiful in my own images, and it’s ironic that some of my new favorites would have been consigned to oblivion (the computer recycle bin) only last year. I’m just beginning to understand how a soft-focus background can simplify the image and enhance the main subject, as in the half-dozen examples in this gallery (click Next in the upper right corner to move through the images). In the one pictured here, I wanted to show the rainbow of colors in a single spray of crocosmia buds. Wherever I looked there were lots of competing shapes (arcs of other flower stems and multiple sharp-edged green spears of foliage) that detracted from the already complex main idea of the shot. In the past I tended to value a shot in which everything was clear and in focus. By getting close and focusing solely on one part of the scene, I got what suggests a reflection or a double exposure. In the other examples, linked to above, I was pleased by the repeating but hazy shapes in the background. With more expensive camera equipment than my Canon G6, it is easy to get this effect on purpose, but I am slowly figuring out how to increase the likelihood of getting reproducible results with a point-&-shoot camera. Incidentally, the glory of crocosmia is considered to be the violent red of full bloom, in this case the variety Lucifer pictured here. In this image I have not done as good a job of de-emphasizing the background, but you can see how those compact oval buds have unfolded to create quite a show. A self-assignment for next year: capture these blooms without getting all the surrounding trees, rocks, and every blade of grass in dizzying focus.