How We Look At Things

Crowds gather late into the night to enjoy the holiday tableaux laid out in Lord and Taylor's Fifth Avenue windows. Mothers cajole tots to turn towards Mommy and smile for a snapshot. Teenage couples hold cell phones at arm's length and click. The iPad Photographer is a new phenomenon. How funny it was to see this lady hoist her big slab of pricey digital technology up in front of her face and shoot photo after photo. As I watched her go from window to window, I realized that she was looking only at her screen, not at the actual scene before her. Her view was filtered through her digital device. Humans have the urge to capture visually or emotionally striking moments. Almost everyone has a digital camera, cell phone or small video camera. We also have eyes and hearts and a memory. With my little camera in my pocket, I looked and then looked some more.