Photo Challenge: Anger

I personally thought "anger" was a tough Photo Challenge.Every time over the past week, when Keith asked for ideas, I just shrugged. As with some of the other prompts, the word felt very personal. Keith said his half-marathon finish time makes him angry. I said that a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes made me angry. (Didn't I just clean the kitchen, like, 5 minutes ago?!?) But it didn't really seem like the anger would come across. Traffic and dealing with idiot drivers always makes me angry, but he can't really have the camera out and shooting the entire drive to work. I mean, I'm sure people do it, but it's probably not the best idea.

So at 8 o'clock Tuesday night, still with no picture, Keith went outside to get some pictures of our backyard. I know I've been complaining about the weather a lot this Spring, but it has seriously been awful. I heard on the radio last week that this has been the rainiest year so far in over 50 years. And it's not just that there's been a lot of rain; it's been spread out so that it's been raining almost every day since mid-March.

Hence, the state of our grass. It's insane. Keith's cut the front grass a few times, but it's been too swampy to cut the back. Plus the backyard is Beckett's squirrel stalking grounds, so it's tall grass intermingled with doggy dirt paths. Very attractive!

This past weekend, Keith finally attempted to cut the backyard .... and the lawnmower broke. Oh, and rain is forecast all this week.

That frustration—plus the annoying fact that neither of us are particularly concerned about having a fantastically manicured lawn, yet there's still a fair amount of effort required just to keep it looking a mite better than constant shagginess—is what Keith was trying to convey with the picture. But I don't really feel like all that anger really came across. He tried taking a few pictures with the lawnmower on it's side, showing the broken part, but I don't know enough about lawnmowers for that picture to even make sense. The first comment he got was, essentially, "Where's the anger?" A few of the other commenters, who live in the rain-soaked region, did identify with the anger and frustration of the situation, but only because they're also living it.

I think, for me, it's a lesson that not ALL pictures have to be universally understood. Maybe you do just need to pick something that makes YOU really, really angry and take a good photo of it. It might inspire anger in others ... or they may just like the composition and find it peaceful and soothing.