Just Like Chocolate Ice Cream and Wind

If you haven’t figured out by this point, my blog titles are usually not straight-forward. My intention when creating them is to get your attention and eventually explaining it. At the same time, pulling together my nonsensical insights and hopefully leaving you with slightly more appreciation for the world around you or, at the very least, a smile. I wanted to write about things that go really well together and combine them to make great things happen, especially when it’s two things that you would never expect to mesh. At this time, you’re likely wondering if the title was meant to imply that Chocolate Ice Cream and Wind go together well. It is. It’s an uncanny combination and in most cases it would not be a good combo. But, when summer heat and an open car window collide, things are chaotic and (if you’re very lucky) beautiful.

Several weeks back, on a day that reached just below 100 degrees, Annie and I decided that we would go get some ice cream for Alex and ourselves. After waiting nearly 25 minutes in line (I guess other people thought it was a good idea to too), we ordered two shakes for Alex and I, and Annie got a chocolate ice cream cone. We had the windows down most of the time, and on our way home, I had the two shakes secured in the front cup holders and Annie was holding her cone. With the blazing-hot sun beating down through the window onto the cone, the ice cream started to melt…… a lot. Annie was worried about it and wanted a napkin to clean it off her hands before she started eating.  I told her licking it up  was the only way to keep it from running onto her hands. She licked it once and said she couldn’t keep up, haha. I don’t blame her. She would have had to constantly lick all the way around it to stop it. At about this point, we had just gone through a stoplight and started to speed up. Once we got up to about 35 miles per hour, I heard a squeal.

This was not a good squeal. Not one of excitement or even the squeal of an adorable tea-cup pig suddenly appearing in my back seat, but one of pure terror! When I looked back at Annie, what I saw is difficult to fully explain. The ice cream was melting like crazy, creating liquid chocolate goo for days. The air coming into the car window at a little over 35mph thrashed Annie’s hair and made it go crazy, covering her entire head and whipping it everywhere so she couldn’t see. At the same time, the wind also blew her liquid ice cream all over the car and all over her. By the time I got the window rolled up, there was ice cream everywhere and this poor little girl was so distraught, you would have thought she just got beat up by a 5th grader, haha. It took her a while to calm down and clean up and to this day, she still hasn’t been able to find the humor in it, but I sure did. Don’t get me wrong, at the time, I  helped her and made sure I wasn’t making things too much worse, but if you ask her, it is definitely still my fault and every time we get ice cream, she makes sure to mention that I need to be careful and not roll the windows down.

Which brings me to my actual point. While Chocolate ice cream and wind don’t sound like a good pair, especially after reading that story, I beg to differ. In this case, it was a good combination because it made me laugh and continues to. It also gave me another reminder of just how different my perspective is than a child’s and even other adults. It warms my heart to think that I get to have a hand in helping that little girl become an unbiased participant in this world and hopefully a contributor. While I was trying to figure out what to write about today, it made me really think about how the littlest things that seem like disaster or just unimportant nonsense can actually make us think or actually turning into more.

For our business, I can think of a million things that could be in that category. From the unlikely pairing of a paper plate and my on-camera flash being a great combination, to bouncing the light off the ceiling to lessen the harshness of the flash, or to the use of a ruler on my mouse pad to help me make straight lines with the mouse in photo shop. One of my favorite pairings came from and idea I had when we shot the Shadbolt wedding in mid-July. When you’re out and about shooting photos, it can be difficult at times to get just the right shot. Whether it’s lighting or movement or anything else, it can require some improvisation. While at the Arboretum just outside Sioux Falls, I couldn’t get just the right light on a photo of the bridal party on a bridge I was shooting from below. I was next to a tree and thought I would try to use leaves close to me to lessen the light and create a unique effect in the photo. It didn’t work, fyi, but it gave me the idea to try it on another shot. I was taking a similar shot and wanted to try that effect in the photo. I found a tree and there was some cloth and plastic ribbon attached to it. I was about to move to the next tree when I thought to myself “why not?” So I went to the tree and used the ribbon in the foreground to create a beautiful effect on the photo that I wouldn’t have got with just leaves. It’s not unusual to use items in the foreground to get similar effects, but what is so unusual is the fact that I later found out it was crime-scene tape. I’ll leave you with this thought: Maybe we should commit more crimes so that photographers can get better pictures. . . . . . . . Or maybe not.

Either way, Put a comment below with some combinations that you think are good that most people wouldn’t think of. Maybe it’s a food or two you combine, or anything else.