With A Camera
Let's start this on a high note. The day, although hectic, was clear as a bell. Good energy, good focus, good thinking, although tiring, as any day like today would be. Now for the low note. The ten rolls of black and white film I got back this afternoon look miserable. The exposures are OK, the focus is OK, the images themselves look like bad accidents, taken a second before or a second after a look I was after crossed a face. Or was there a look I was after, was I just pointing and pulling the trigger without thought? Zen gone round the bend. Photographer fatigue. Asleep at the shutter. Let's hope there's something better in the miserable two rolls of color I'll get back tomorrow. The up news is very up – no dizziness – the down news is transitory. No comparison. There is film in the camera. There is a tomorrow. Mumble.
And with that, sports fans, what else is going on? Work, work, yes, yes, we've all heard the drill. Many would like to have the problem. Or have you forgotten the paycheck? The rent checks that don't bounce? A lunch this Friday with friends I haven't seen in a while, ex-company folks – two working, one newly unemployed – the four of us coming together to compare notes and eat an endangered species of fish native to my home town. And drink. And talk. I may take the afternoon off and, if that's not convenient – my rude compatriots having pushed ahead of me in the queue – then Monday off and another three day weekend, four now in a row. If you're going to be dizzy, if the world is going to tilt on its axis, then pamper yourself, my friends, drink a better brand of Scotch. Eat the occasional ice cream cone.
You've gone silly. Silly and boring.
I'm thinking about the photographs. The need to step back and look at them with a more jaundiced eye. Tomorrow, not tonight. Lessons to be learned, my buckos, strobe lights to buy. Carnaval is gone and I can't wait another year to practice. You never know when you have another year, another month, another day with a camera.
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