Over the years I have evolved a few key phrases I try to keep in mind to make life run a little more easily. One of these is “it never hurts to state the obvious”. This is kind of a corollary to my “never assume” one. If you try to go with the pair of these, you generally have a pretty good idea what is happening, is expected to happen, or what the other person *thinks* will happen. I still go astray with miscommunication every now and then, but that’s generally when I forget these little words to live by.

This came to mind when I was wandering through my photo archives of the last year (doubtless looking for something else…I spend a lot of time doing that, but rediscover a lot of interesting visuals that way). I found my photo of this road sign that “states the obvious”, taken last spring en route to my friend’s farm where I was hoping to photograph the wild swans that had stopped over in a body of water (formerly a field in drier times) across the road from her place. I have a bit of a thing about swans (I have a bit of a “thing” about a lot of things as you’ll find over time) so I had hopes of this opportunity, but being truly wild birds, and survivors, they weren’t about to get in decent range of even my longish lens, so I didn’t get any acceptable shots of them that day. I did get some very nice ones in the fall, though, of captive swans at the local zoo, in their very nice setting.

Well, I see the eccentric format is still with us. Next time I’ll try changing something to see if I can get a first sentence that can be read without contortion.