SWEATY SNAPS
So last weekend I went hunting for shots. The conditions were a little hard to describe. Think oppressively hot, like leaving the comfort of your car’s cool air conditioning to step into a steamy heavy heat that made me nauseous and I didn’t know why. With each step I got sicker and sicker, with each step I kept denying that I was and kept moving forward, as it was such a pretty day.
I began to sweat and feel dizzy and grabbed this guy on the swing. He reminded me of a friend I used to have. He was one of those guys that completed the moment and turned it into an event. He was a creative counterpart and together we saw the world in a very funny way, a very bright and intelligent but funny way.
I guess they call it “having a falling out”, but we went our separate ways after years of friendship. So I saw this guy sitting alone on this bench. I thought about the wife he used to have, who died unexpectedly from cancer. I thought about how this could be my old friend but was too hot and nauseous to approach him and left my past behind me.
Further down the path was a woman struggling with a young child. The baby would drop something and as the woman reached down to pick it up, the woman would drop something. This went on for a while till the woman picked up the baby and walked away in distress.
Sometime in the next few weeks, I expect to be a Grandpa for the first time. It will be good to be carrying a baby around with me again. I don’t think I ever looked or felt distressed when my kids were little. No matter what was going on, I always felt invigorated by the little baby beans that constantly drooled, cried, giggled and slapped my big face with their little baby hands.
After a little while I knew it was too hot and didn’t care why. I rushed back to the car fearing something dreadful would happen to me out in this painful mugginess. Once in the car with the air conditioning blowing on me, I decided to go somewhere, indoors where I could shoot something while remaining in the cool air conditioning.
Off to Marie Selby Gardens I went, filled with great resolve. In the cool lobby, I paid my admission and could barely wait to get out there and shoot a bunch of weird-looking nature. Some how when I was thinking greenhouse… I was thinking like a giant cooler that one would find in a florist that keeps the flowers fresh. Some how I thought that was where I was heading.
But the minute I left the air-conditioned lobby and stepped into the green house where the beauties were budding, I realized that I had paid to enter an environment that was actually hotter than where I was before. The hot-house where the tropical flowers were, was so hot that I knew I had to shoot as many as I could, as quickly as I could before I would surely melt.
There was a woman in the hot-house with me, who worked for the gardens, and she was wandering around occasionally asking if she could help me. Normally I would have asked her all about the flowers I was shooting but I was too rushed, too hot and too excited to get as many as could before the sweat on my brow would pour into my viewfinder eye.
Please enjoy my sweaty snaps.
Barry Stein's Blog 
Love these flower photos! Too beautiful!
Thanks Amy!
These are very lovely photos of your sweaty snaps. Imagine how living things can thrive in major heat and humidity! These snaps are among the very best – thanks for sharing them. Love the narrative too, always thoughtful and you can write a great story too! Thank you! Jeannette
Thanks Jeanette… regards to your beautiful sister, Bob and the rest of the family.