What was that about?

Nothing much. Things go well, but things are pickling up speed like a bus without any brakes on a mountain road and I'm seeing many hours ahead now that the two people in my section who have inadequately covered our tasks have shrunk down to one.

So you're carping now in this new year as you did most of the last?

I'm half a bottle into the sake and I'm feeling fine, thank you, I'm just laying it out on the screen to see what it looks like, how it sounds, now that the new year has begun.

I've run a number of pictures of the young woman above, photographs taken at a studio near here in Emeryville. The poses, the costumes were chosen by the model. My interest was in doing the session, working with a professional model and futzing with the lights. I called it a session to get my feet wet. They're different from the photographs I've been taking on the street and over the table at lunch. The lighting alone gives them a kind of magazine electric quality, a quality I'm not altogether sure that I prefer, but I'm happy with how much I've learned about lighting through the experience.

I have another session coming up at the end of the month with the same model where I've mapped out two series of photographs. I've been thinking about them, what I want to accomplish with them, and it's been an interesting experience. It's an interesting situation where you're both “directing” the situation and depending on a certain spontaneity similar to the street shooting to bring it off. Not altogether different from the way I've always described writing, where the sound has to flow but the exposition, the meaning, has to be tight and concise. Lots to learn here (said the man).