It's All in How You Look at It

Dave Gardner was a popular southern comedian in the 1960s, and one of his favorite sayings was, "It's all in how you look at it and all in how you study it."

I took a picture of a shady little creek running through Mynelle Gardens in Jackson, Mississippi, a few years ago. It was a warm spring day, and the ferns, rocks, and trickling water were a cool, welcoming sight.

I've always liked the picture and wanted to use it in our new home, so I had it printed on a large canvas. Unfortunately, when we hung the canvas, I was disappointed in how it looked on the wall space. Something just wasn't "right," and it didn't take me long to realize that the shape and size of the wall dictated that a vertically-shaped picture would look better than the landscape orientation of the canvas.

I turned the picture vertically to see how it would look and was amazed at the transformation. Not only did the image's shape look much better on the wall space, but the picture itself was transformed. The little creek appeared to be a rock face with water trickling down it, and the ferns and plants seemed to be growing out of the rocks.

Perspective is an amazing thing, and as I stood and looked at the picture on the wall, I wondered if anyone would notice that it's actually a picture of a creek turned 90 degrees on its side. I guess it will depend on "all in how they look at it and all in how they study it," right?

Writing with a Southern Accent

 

My favorite form of punctuation is the comma.  I also use a lot of dot-dot-dots (also known as "ellipses") to enable me to continue my "run-on" thoughts in a run-on sentence and to, hopefully, keep it from sounding like I'm "running on."

I confess that I don't always use commas and ellipses correctly, but tend to happily and generously sprinkle them in and amongst my writings to slow down my thoughts as I'm writing ... and to give my reader a chance to pause as he or she is reading my babblings. [Did you notice how you slowed down when you got to the "dot-dot-dots?"]

My own rule of thumb about when to use a comma is quite simple: When I finish writing a story, I read it out loud and when I need to take a breath in between phrases, I insert a comma ... or if I really get short of breath while reading, I will add the little dot-dot-dots, instead of a comma. 

My photography website is called "Photography with a Southern Accent," so I suppose that it's possible that my southern accent could carry over to my style of writing, too.  Could that be the reason I use so many commas to slow it down?

By now, I'm sure you're wondering why in the world I spent valuable time babbling on and on about commas and dot-dot-dots, of all things.  To be honest, as I proofread this, I was kind of wondering the same thing!  

But, at least, in the future ... if you ever read one of my stories again ... maybe you can imagine me reading it to you in my slow, southern drawl, slightly pausing for effect after each little comma and dot-dot-dot.