Mind Pictures

By chance yesterday we were speaking with an "eyewitness".  What she saw wasn't much more than a silly adult indiscretion - perhaps just a moment of forgetfulness - less than a $1.00 and missed in the bottom of a shopping cart. But what she saw wasn't so much the $.79 cent candy bar with orange lettering and "peanuts" on a grey white background, but the glance towards it by the miscreant and that instant glance of recognition as eye met eye. She knew. The miscreant knew she knew.

We envy those with terrific "mind pictures". It isn't perfect memory. It is an ability to capture a scene in that mind's eye and store it away for later reference and up it pops as if in some sort of carnival peep show - a lifetime of pictures that run endlessly and stop for examination when prompted.

When we think of Ansel Adams, untrained as we are, we think that his mind's eye is working every second and that when he saw something of interest he found a place where he could snap a shot of it when it appeared again. He must have had a plan - a premonition - a mind's eye reference point to catch the scene as surely as our friend had the chance to nab the candy thief.

Adams did. She didn't.