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When You Tie Your Shoes A little bit of sun today and the urge came to walk over to BART, take the train into San Francisco and have lunch. It's a nice walk. Lots of young women pushing baby carriages near the station. No connection whatsoever for a Sole Proprietor, of course, they might as well have been living in bubble land, speaking bubble talk, pushing bubble baby buggies on a bubble afternoon. No upset, it's just they're in a different time on a different trip. A good time, a good trip. Same with the others, it was pretty crowded for a cloudy afternoon. Joggers running in pairs with matching striped suits, bikers in pork pie helmets dodging through traffic, a photographer Sole Proprietor with a Nikon in hand, the camera strap wrapped in the approved manner around his wrist. There aren't as many photographers on the street as there are young mothers, runners, shoppers, bikers, bus riders and dancers in bear suits (The Sole Proprietor shoots pictures of dancers in bear suits. He's a sucker for dancers in bear suits.), but that's all right. The day is OK and lunch is on Powell street, one block above the cable car turntable, with the inevitable lines of people waiting patiently for a car. (The natives walking up a block or two and getting on without any lines at the first stop.) You have to watch your camera in the city (and everywhere else, for that matter). You carry the camera in your hand and not on your shoulder and you keep track as best you're able of the people around you. One day someone will grab it and it will be gone and that has to be OK, I guess, but you hope they don't take any part of you with it. Your hand, for example, with the camera strap still wrapped around your wrist. I carry insurance, of course, the company pays if someone steals it, whether it's at home, on the street or in downtown Beirut. The contract doesn't say anything about body parts though. I shot pictures of a Mime, a group of "Aztec" dancers in feathered costumes soliciting a crowd for donations (and getting them) and an old man chasing seagulls away from the pigeons he was feeding on the sidewalk. Any of these had the potential for a good photograph and maybe I got one, but I should have worked harder at it if I'd really wanted to be sure. An OK day. I got out of the house, did a little walking and finished a roll of film. Need more pictures for this journal. A little pressure building here, but that's the idea, part of the project. What happens when you have to produce? Do you shift into second gear? Does your back feel better in the morning when you tie your shoes? |
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