A series of essays….
 |
WHO DOESN’T REMEMBER OUR FAVORITE ‘ZOOM-ZOOM’ CHARACTERS SEEN EVERY SATURDAY MORNING: WILE E. COYOTE & THE ROAD RUNNER… BEEP BEEP! |
Source: tvtropes
….as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
If you look at the word zoom closely or for an extended period of time, your eyes begin to cross and you may find you lose all recognition of this simple, four-letter word! If you look at any word long enough, it just doesn’t make sense any longer. It’s all a matter of what the eyes perceive and what messages they send to the brain. When we over exercise the message, our eyes tend to see the image in a different way. We know the word is zoom. We know the meaning of the word zoom. However, our eyes look at the word and it changes how we see it: we analyze the structure of the word instead of the word as an entire entity and it becomes strange to us.
I think we all do this with words at one time or another. There must be a scientific term applied to this phenomenon!
Meanwhile, I’m thinking back on how this word, zoom, has fit into my life long before Zoom Links and Zoom Meetings. Even my parent’s black, box camera was equipped with minor zoom capabilities and produced some of the best (black & white) photos that I, and others my age, cherish to this day. My first all inclusive zoom camera, the Minolta compact zoom camera with wrist strap, gave me the freedom to take it anywhere and have at the ready while my children were quite young.
 |
THE CAMERA THAT TAUGHT ME TO BETTER UNDERSTAND AND ENJOY THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CANON AE-1 |
The camera that truly changed my life was the Canon AE-1 film camera that Dan surprised me with at a birthday celebration long ago. It was classified in the ‘heavy weight’ division of cameras and was the friend who taught me the major capabilities of a powerful zoom lens, how to gauge lighting to the best advantage, and enjoy, in general, the functionality of a well-made camera. After adding a telephoto or long focus lens to it, I felt as though I could swing by the office, pick-up my National Geographic lanyard, and proceed to fly off to some exotic location on a photo shoot!
By 2003, the Sony Digital Still Camera (DSC-V1) with Memory Stick and Smart Zoom was the new rage in camera technology. Before Smart Phones displaced the singular camera as most used for sharp, beautiful imagery, it was the Canon EOS Rebel, lightweight and highly efficient, that truly revolutionized the digital world for me. This camera with its intelligent zoom lens was highly prized and used more than any camera I have ever owned—at least until Steve Jobs changed our way of thinking about all-in-one performance of camera, phone, and computer.
In October of 2000 a young boy named Micah Kanters from Chicago uttered the two words that rang out across our television screens in the form of, “Zoom, zoom!” when Mazda used his face and voice to launch a thousand sedans. Micah is now a thirty-one year-old lawyer with a wife and newborn child of his own. This Mazda catch phrase soon became Mazda’s official slogan and the company’s first globally-unified marketing campaign.
 |
MICAH KANTERS TODAY AT THIRTY-ONE WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILD |
Upon leaving our home in Orlando two years ago, a sight I miss the most is when incoming airplanes made their decent just to the west of our home and landed five miles away at OIA, Orlando International Airport. The zoom and gentle glide of huge, bulky jetliners taking off and landing has always fascinated me and I could watch them ‘do their thing’ for hours on end.
Living in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, years ago, I would look up into the summer sky and follow the gentle criss-cross pattern of the white, high altitude contrails made by the jets streaming through the gentle, blue sky while making their way in every possible direction. Where did they originate from and what was their particular destination? I would make-up short stories about the people in the planes and live vicariously through them as we landed in Hawaii, New Zealand, Quebec City, or among the bright lights of Paris. Then I would zoom off in a taxi to my imaginary destination to be filled with action and excitement.
For now, anyway, the real action zooming around me these days is in the garden. Filled with old and new plantings and lively colors each spring, it guarantees to attract the lively bees out for a tasty snack while they gather pollen to be distributed along their zig-zagging flight itinerary. I used to be frightened by their presence as a child and swat away at them if they came too close. Now, well, now they have become friends as I, and many others, have learned to value and dearly appreciate their close friendship. Today, I look at them and smile while being charmed by their important task and very existence.
The days of zooming around taking one child to ballet class and the other to her guitar lesson are in the past. However, having to keep a multitude of work related appointments each week has helped me fully appreciate attending Zoom Meetings—for now. The convenience of a Zoom Meeting is very powerful, my friends. It allows us to be in many places with people from all over the globe without the inconvenience of major stress, travel time, or related expenses. It has not only kept us in touch with family and friends, but we’ve had the opportunity to experience real-time museum tours, walk the streets of Paris with our own guide, attend classes, and all while a global pandemic had us firmly in its grasp. Zoom Meetings could be the lifesaving concept we accept as the norm in the months and years to come.
Today I look at this four-letter word, zoom, with new eyes and ask: Is our once fast paced world learning positive lessons from our extreme pandemic one? That verdict may still be out until we are once again free to move about the world in peace, harmony and good health. Life has changed from what we knew it to be—and, I believe we should come to terms with many of these changes. Things do happen for good reasons and opening up our mind to them just may be a lot of what this past year has been all about.
Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment