Back from breakfast, a waffle and mixed fruit again, this time a second customer in the room talking all the while on a cell, a twenty minute conversation at seven in the morning with whomever. Annoying, but not that annoying. A definition of living within the faceless society, perhaps: annoying, but not that annoying. Of course “faceless” is not the way I'd describe this city. I look at faces, observe faces, photograph faces with what some might say obsession.

Art & Soul later, I'm thinking of what to bring for cameras. Two? Why two? Two are bulky and I tend to end up using just one. The D3 with the 24 - 70mm lens? With a long lens, my traditional tool for the forming up of parades? Maybe just the 24 - 70mm, the full frame brother to the smaller sensor 17 - 55mm I managed to snap at its base last Sunday? Focus the vision to look for photographs that fit its capabilities and don't let an extra camera over the shoulder slow you down? Get away for a while from this long lens stuff? Do you have conversations with yourself about your cameras? What to bring? What to use? I thought not. Someone has to maintain a sense of sanity.

Later. Today after Art & Soul I'm tired. I said I was tired after walking and taking pictures yesterday, but I was uninformed. Today I am informed and sit here at the computer after a short nap in which I retrieved some of my senses and say flat out: walking, when done to excess, will lay me out. That and waiting on the damned bus to arrive to return to the apartment.

I took but one camera, the full frame sensor D3 with the slightly wide to slightly telephoto zoom, wondered at first if I'd made the right decision (passing other photographers juggling multiple long and short lens cameras) and then got in the groove. I walk when I shoot. Or is that obvious? I tried some things and felt good about them although, in looking at the photographs, not all of them worked.

Some situations needed more patience, more time, a better eye. Shooting pictures is almost a head game in that you're messing with your brain to find different ways of seeing that catch your interest. It takes over when you get a camera in your hand. You can have a good session, seeing things you haven't seen before, trying things you haven't tried before, and think you have photographs to show for it and then, well, they don't turn out. But if you follow what you think is working, interesting, the photographs will follow, but maybe the next day, maybe the next week, as you continue. Look - shoot, look - shoot. Tootle-tee-toot.

You're winging it. Or whinging it. You really don't know what you're talking about.

Maybe so although there's something to it, the day for all my talking went well, the shooting was interesting, the taking along of but one camera settled (for now), but the walking was, well, overdone. Well overdone. But I'll recover, maybe tomorrow.

Later still. That was written just after arriving home. I've had another two hour nap in the interim. I'm still a bit blitzed, but I've now had crackers and cheese to tamp down the hunger and plan to drink this here sake I have sitting in a small bottle beside me. It's Sunday, no jury duty in the morning, another week on the horizon, the BART strike, from listening to the news, not in the cards for tomorrow.