celebrate the every-once-in-a-while

i spent some time taking pictures of part of my husband's large vinyl collection and our turntable {which i found brand new, courtesy of the 1970s, at a second hand store for $25 about twelve years ago and bought the hubby for his birthday}. 

this was what i chose to capture for today's elevate the everyday prompt {which is music } on shutter sisters.

i know i've been shooting a lot of things using that bright, blown-out light from our windows for my photos lately. but at least it's a different window this time. and this is actually where our record player sits... right in front of this window.

i almost sent this second image to the trash. then i realized that i loved how it {accidentally} turned out! so kept it and used it. i loved what happened in it. i had intended to focus on the turntable, but my camera's auto-focus missed and focused on the background instead. {oh, who am i kidding... it's just operator error, plain and simple.} 

but the cool part is that, because of the abundant light outside behind the player, the window areas are completely over exposed to white. {in real life, all you would see is greenery where you see white in the photo.} however, the filter-effect of the plastic lid on the player kept the outdoors portion {the tree} from being overexposed, so you can see the leaves of the tree through the plastic areas. when i noticed that... how the record player was almost like a portal through which the green life outside could be seen... i didn't just see it as an "oops" out-of-focus photo anymore.

anyway, as far as the subject goes, i love mr. b's music collection. when he saw the first photo, he was disappointed with the group of records that i chose to photograph. but there was no method to my madness. i simply grabbed a handful from the right side of the shelf and stuck them up on the player. if i was going to get all stagy about it, i would have picked all my favorites... dylan, donovan, zeppelin, mancini... just to name a few. but i have a one-year-old climbing up my back when i try to do stuff like this. so reo speedwagon and what surrounded was as good as it was gonna get. 

we love to throw on a record from time to time. i guess it's not quite an everyday thing as much as it is a once-in-a-while thing. so i'll just call it "celebrate the once-in-a-while" instead of "elevate the everyday".

i love the simon quote. it's one i plan to use again, as i had wanted to write about something very close to that theme, anyway. but i think of it in terms of my father, right now. music matured with him and followed him right on up until the day he died. my father had thousands of vinyl recordings... everything from jazz to classical. he was the biggest music enthusiast i ever knew.


i find it interesting that things are so different now than when i was isaac's age. not surprising. but interesting, still. compact discs were still more than a decade off when i was born. but what is also interesting is that, even though things have changed so much from vinyl era and the music birthed in those days up through the c.d. age and its music {yes, we are still stuck in the c.d. era... haven't quite moved into iPod/iTunes-land yet}, things are still somewhat the same.

especially in our home. most of our furniture is vintage mid-century modern, and we have quite a few vinyls in our arsenal to complement that decor. so... things have changed. but in some ways, they are still very much the same.

just the way i like it.