Don't You Think?
This should be an interesting Thursday and Friday coming up
and I'll tell you about it next week when the smoke clears. For the
members of my family who may be reading this, I'll begin running
some of the family pictures tomorrow and sending the usual batch of
prints to Aunt Vivienne early next week. The three of you I talked
with at the party, by the way, you know who you are, have yet to
wire the money to my account to guarantee the loss of those
particular prints we were discussing.
This day on the train coming back to Oakland is being written from
home on Wednesday. Cat's alive, apartment didn't burn.
A call to the office indicates no one has died or gone postal in
my absence. No one, in fact, has noticed my absence. I say another
successful Seattle trip and a good party.
I read
Chuck's admission that he once had a secret life as a photographer,
one, for example, who's spent his time rubbing his fingers on a print
as it develops to bring up a section more quickly to make it darker.
And now he has not only gone out and acquired equipment (Nikon FE,
lenses), but pissed off his first subject in the street. This is good.
Encounters like these are considered successful when they don't break
your camera or your fingers (one by one, all the while grinning), this
wisdom imparted to me by John "Three Fingers" Free, my street shooting
instructor.
I was thinking about my photography returning to Oakland on the train.
There's a time when you have to settle in and start shooting projects
if you really want to get more serious about shooting pictures.
I've been making technical mistakes that have to do with time and
practice, which are no big deal, since all they require is more
of the same, but if I really want to improve I have to pick
a subject and just shoot the damned thing until I've squeezed every
image, every angle, every lighting, every not lighting, every drop of
knowledge I can glean out of it. It might take a day, it might take
a week, it might take a month, it might take a year, but that's the
way they say you learn. I'm thinking about the day deal or maybe a
week, but two hours each evening or, and this for me verges on
madness, two hours in the morning before work. (What am I saying?)
I've never done that. I've shot a bunch of pictures, but I've never
sat down and said, well, let's go shoot the shit out of (fill in
the blank) and see what happens.
Later. Sounds like the usual Sole Proprietor bullshit to me,
but I maybe I'll try it. Next week, no, not next week, next month,
after the move. Next month is always safe, don't you think?
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