My wife often tells me it is difficult to be with me when I have my camera, because “it mediates the experience”.  What I think she doesn’t understand is that it mediates my experience whether I have it over my shoulder or not.  I see the world differently now, and always will.  I notice things I never noticed before.  I see beauty where I didn’t before.  I frame things that aren’t framed, isolate microcosms of the world around me as images in my mind, even if I don’t snap the shutter.  It’s like learning a language, it makes the experience richer, not narrower.  Unfortunately, as with a foreign language, it can exclude those who don’t speak it.  The language of my eye saw this sign and framed it as a composition, balanced and full of contrast, which I have translated for you by clicking the shutter.