Beyond the duck pond

After the weekend the acute inpatient unit is full. So I attended the "flow meeting" a meeting of senior inpatient unit staff working together to decide who might possibly be discharged so that those waiting to be admitted, can be. A basically thankless task, as the beds so found are more often than not filled again before the end of the day. Requiring repetition tomorrow, and tomorrow and ...

Walked back to the admin floor where I have the luxury use of a desk in a three person space in a totally open plan "office space". Despite that investigations have strongly suggested that open plan offices induce more stress, and make workers less efficient, managers believe the reduced cost is worth all that. Went by way of a short loop through the Domain, and got this photo across part of the duck pond. 

For as long as my photo lasts, he has his back to me, and is standing still. Yet, in reality his turned back was a brief aspect of his interaction with the unseen grandchild (probably) he was guiding. I have no idea what I would have seen him doing before I arrived. I do know that less than 10 seconds later he would not have been in my photo. Which one would have been more true?

The camera never lies, we are told. Perhaps, that's because it's truth is ephemeral and is replaced by another truth that may challenge the first. Yet each is still no more than the record of an instant which has gone even before we check what the photo looks like. 

I resist the temptation to use a motor shutter, as I would rather miss the image I saw when deciding to take the photo than have to choose between instants only one of which (at most) I saw before pressing the shutter button.