Lying low

I didn't have a good night. Three days on from the operation, although the wound is stabilising, it's been painful and uncomfortable for much of the day. It's a bit like the aftermath of having a big painful tooth extracted. It's such a relief but it still puts you on hold for a while. 

Post-anaesthetic tiredness has caught up with me, but it's not been possible to sleep except in short spells, so I have paced slowly around the house and garden, not covering much distance. This will be the first day in a couple of years when I have fallen well short of my daily target walking for only half an hour instead of at least two  - not that it matters, though I dread stiffening up for lack of exercise.

A lovely sunny day, but I needed to stay home while Clare and Kath went off to picnic on Monknash beach, south of Cowbridge. The roads to the coast were inevitably crowded being bank holiday Monday. For me sitting at all, let alone in a car is impossible at the moment. I'll have to postpone tomorrow's eye test, as I'm unable to sit in a chair. 

In between bouts of walking and resting, I finished my reflection for Corpus Christi, and wrote a sermon for next Sunday. Fortunately my mind is clear regardless of the state of my body. On previous occasions after surgery, down time has been necessary. I wasn't expecting the same impact after the removal of the suture, and wasn't warned adequately of this when the procedure was explained to me beforehand. But I have been here before and will get over it. Just staying in bed all day is no option, with the pressure on my rear end the way it is. Being careful about every move is what counts, and accepting tiredness. That's what I keep telling myself.

This evening there was a fascinating programme on BBC Four with top photographer Rankin tutoring half a dozen promising individuals of different backgrounds and experiences in a variety of different settings, with different kinds of story to be told in pictures - a boxing gym, a wholesale fruit market, a fashion shoot featuring models with disabilities. All of the students were using hefty full frame cameras with an assortment of lenses, mostly Canon, though I think there was a Nikon camera there too. Choice or product placement? I couldn't help wondering. It was the second in a series. Tomorrow I must watch the first one on catch-up. It was amazing to see the variety of expensive high tech kit used in the fashion shoot. The cameras were cable connected to a computer displaying photos almost instantly, big 25-50 mega pixel hi-res JPEG images, ten times bigger uncompressed. How things have moved on since the days of film, and yet for some photographers, film is still the definitive medium for quality and colour. 

I know I take quite good photos on times, and take a camera everywhere, to point and shoot at whatever attracts my eye, but this programme made me realise that I don't really think enough about photos I am taking, and what story I'm aiming to tell with them. Hmm - now that is quite a challenge to sleep on.