Friday, though. The project from hell was finished today and that's good. I'll spend Monday making a list of things I've put on hold, people who are waiting out in the pale light of the cubicle farms, stacked one floor above another, waiting for the technological fix on my list, I've got what you want, dear hearts. I just wish I had what you need.

I'm not sure this is a good photograph, as such. It is the photo of a beautiful woman with an interesting expression in a costume thats nice. Just another picture of its kind? I suspect. Still, of the five frames I shot of this subject, this is the one I liked, this is the one I'd just as soon shoot again, although I'd be looking for something more (the expression, my man, get the expression!) and I suspect two things: first, that I am a mundane shooter of ordinary pictures of attractive women (well, it really is just people, interesting looking people) and that's about the sum of it, and second, that's OK. I'm liking it. It is still getting me up and out of bed in the mornings after packing the cameras that night. Half the time I don't shoot a shot, the camera a lead brick over my left shoulder, not a thought in my head or a subject in my sight and still, once in a while, something comes by.

I wish, when I picked up that first camera as a teenager, as an almost teenager, that I'd taken what little understanding I had and gone with it. No better argument for perseverence in the face of, um, distractions. Might have been interesting, because if I'd kept shooting snapshots of good looking girls over these intervening years, I'd have a stack of photographs forty miles high that I could use here and not have to pack this silly camera!

Oops.

So, as I said, it's Friday. Some shooting coming up this weekend with the Gay Pride parade. Finish the first Chinese New Year parade section for artandlife. Forget about anything else. Smoked oysters from the can and packaged noodles for dinner. A pretty good Friday here in Oakland.