I’ve been keeping my eye on the used camera stock in our local (and very reputable) photo shops. Just a few weeks ago, a Nikon D300s with the MB-D10 battery grip came in for resale. It was a recent purchase, too. A lifelong customer of this particular shop had purchased the camera in August. Sadly, he died soon after, and his family returned the camera (gently used) for resale.

When I heard this story, I immediately thought of what my Nikon 105 mm, 2.8 Macro lens might do on this Nikon body-with-a-story. I dreamed up scenarios that were much like the one from the first Harry Potter movie, where Harry goes to Olivanders to get his wand. He goes through a couple of wands that have no charge to them. Then, he is handed a third wand by Ollivander, and immediately Harry experiences an inexplicable charge, a rush of energy through him and then outward that tells both him and Olivander that This Was The One.

“Curious, very curious,” Olivander says.

Harry inquires, and Olivander goes on to say that, sometimes, the wand chooses its user, and that great things are to be expected of Mr. Potter.

That feeling, that inexplicable charge, is what I expected to feel today when I walked into that shop to check out that camera, hold it in my hands, and wait to hear my photo mentor say, “Curious, very curious.”

Instead, and in the words of Diana from A Chorus Line, I Felt Nothing.

And to which, my photo mentor simply replied, “It’s a good price. I don’t know what else I can say.”

I felt dejected, destroyed, and diminished to some humbled clump of clay, a blob of self-pity that wallowed in the shallowness of five stupid words, It wasn’t meant to be.

I left the store empty, in more ways than one.

It didn’t take me long to pick it back up, though. (For obvious reasons, please visit my previous entry about being happy). I got in the bug and drove off, gradually feeling pretty good that I didn’t jump at that great price and wait for that beautiful camera to grow on me.

Indeed, it is very curious that this camera did not find me. I have the patience, and I know that I will be glad when I find that right camera (or it finds me) and that rush of energy rushes through me and beyond!