An Unintentional, and Perfect, Edit

A new feature magically appeared on my phone recently.

Every now and then when a picture I take gets auto-uploaded to Google+, Google automatically edits it for me with some delightful additions like frames and interesting edges.

But the thing about this feature is that Google doesn't auto-edit every picture and it doesn't tell me which ones it picks, so the only time I see the results is when I log in to Google+.

One morning two weeks ago I took a picture of my backyard. It had rained the night before and the clouds were just breaking up as the sun rose. The effect was fairly fantastic, so I captured it and I went to work. Google must have liked it because when I logged in later that day I found this.

I kind of like that Google chose this picture to edit. Much like the view from the train platform, I take pictures of my backyard all the time, in all different seasons. It began when we first moved to the suburbs and I started taking early morning runs. Something about the sun rising over the back of my house pulled me in, and I got into the habit of documenting it a couple of times a week. It always struck me how different the sunrise looked in the suburbs from the sunrise in Manhattan, a mere twenty miles away.

And I still take those pictures, mostly, I think, because it still kind of amazes me that we live where we live. That we own a house and are making a life that is so far removed from the life that we had when we were just married and living in the city. A good life, and one we are proud of.

So the almost dream-like quality of this edited picture, unintentional, I'm sure, on Google's part, is actually kind of perfect.

We live here. And I don't think that will ever stop being important.