One of my (slightly odd) personal traditions is to mark Katherine’s birthday by taking time on my own to wander, explore, think and generally mark the passage of time. After you have kids, you rather forget about your own age until your birthday rolls around and then you generally cringe slightly. With children in your life, the passage of time gets marked more by how they age than how you do, which is why things like bifocals and arthritis are so completely and utterly surprising and just a little insulting to those who require them. The sudden shock of looking at the world from the perspective of your own body, when so often you’re preoccupied with those of your children, can be a little daunting.

In any event, today is Katherine’s birthday and today I have been a mother for nine years and forty weeks (well, forty weeks less two days, in truth). So I took advantage of supper being ready-made (it’s soup day) and high-tailed it out of town. I had no particular destination in mind, but I knew I wanted to go west and to got somewhere where there was coastal scenery and a nice place to walk a dog.

I wound up in Bay Roberts (yes, it’s a mystery to me how the happened, too).

I took a whack of pictures, whcih I have yet to edit, but I noticed that I will be faced with an all-to-familiar conundrum insofar as editing is concerned. I tend to take a series of shots of things, using different exposures and bracketing everything six ways to Sunday, so I often end up with a lot of photos that can look pretty close to the same. Picking out the best technically isn’t hard, but sometimes there are two or three shots that are really, really close in quality and whose differences make them effectively different pictures.

A case in point: French’s Cove. A gorgeous walk through areas that used to be communities but have since been abandoned. The area is now restored by a local heritage committee and is a fascinating walk.

I took three different exposures and the depth of focus completely changes the shot. I *think* that my personal preference is for the middle shot, but I’d be interested in hearing other folks’ opinions.

You see, my theory is that when it comes right down to it, picking the right shot from a group of several is all about personal opinion and choice.

Which is what makes it so darned difficult.