That's Not a Cell Phone, I'm Driving and Taking Photos

Have you ever been driving down the highway, and you come up behind someone driving below the speed limit, lingering at stop lights, maybe weaving a little bit? If you are like most drivers, you pull into the other lane, ready to scream at the slow driver, and you pull along side the car to find the driver yakking away on the cell phone. Or, maybe you've been guilty of doing it yourself. So, how do you react when the driver who is creating havoc on the roads isn't on a cell phone, but snapping pictures in the middle of traffic?

That driver would be me. It started innocently enough. I was driving around one day with my daughter in the car. She'd just purchased a Sony Cybershot Digital Camera and she took pictures of everything. Infatuated with this new, easy to use camera, I bought a Cybershot for myself and found I could take pictures of almost anything without all the hassles of traditional 35mm cameras. I began to carry my camera with me everywhere I went. Before I knew it, I was snapping photographs while stopped at traffic lights, at stop signs, and daringly, while driving.

But my real descent into photography-while-driving was in November, 2006, when I took my father on a road trip from Florida to Kentucky so that he could retire in his home state. I had not been out of the state of Florida in almost 12 years. It was refreshing to see something besides palm trees and brown grass. In need of photo-documenting this occasion, I took pictures of everything I thought was worthy of marking the trip. I took photos of trees with late fall colorful leaves, rock faces, road signs, the Atlanta skyline, large crosses along the I-75 corridor in Tennessee, the fog in the mountains that gave the Smokey Mountains its name, and I took pictures of my old hometown.