Breakfast at the usual café, pancakes, mixed fruit and coffee, back now with the sun coming full tilt through the sliding glass door to the balcony, the morning chill, but the later morning and afternoon will obviously be warm and comfortable. Shirt sleeve weather. Holidays coming to California weather. Puts a spring in your step, don't you think?

Where is this going?

I have no idea. These things start and rapidly take on a life of their own. I'm not sure I'm here on the page or some other dufus has taken over who only comes out through a keyboard.

That's enough.

That is enough. Restart:

Later. A 9:28 bus downtown to walk by the sculpture I ran a photograph of yesterday, noting the artist (Bruce Beasley) and the title (Vitality) erected in 2002 because, well, it's not nice to run a photograph of an artist's work without mentioning his name. This included walking by an art exhibit (I had to blow up the photograph to read the card below the sculpture) and taking a picture of one of the pieces through the gallery window. OK. A walk then to Peet's to sit out on the patio (again) and drink a cup of coffee, the morning colors very nice, the city crisp and inviting in the distance. Not many people around, but that's rather nice for walking in downtown Oakland. Lots of “nice” it seems, this morning, in Oakland. A walk then back to the apartment, a picture of two showing not all of them turn out all that well. No complaints. A good Sunday morning with a camera, a good any morning with a camera in the sun and the cool fall air.

Actually, the picture of the geese seems to grow on me.

That's the problem with photography. Or any art, I suspect. You bump along day to day not quite sure whether or not you like the stuff you're doing. I posted another page yesterday evening of miscellaneous photographs on artandlife. I like them. I don't like them. Then I like them. Hard to say. A photograph I've taken before walking in front of the Oakland City Hall. One day I'll get this guy with his shadow captured the way I'd like, but it wasn't this morning, my head evidently at that one moment full of sawdust.

Then again I'm looking forward to the winter and the opportunity for photographs. This wasn't the case earlier when I was just starting shooting pictures again in the early 90's (after a very long absence). Parades, yes, I knew how to shoot parades, I knew what I was after, but there are no parades in winter, there are no “street festivals”, as such, and shooting in winter with one or two exceptions (the Chinese New Year Parade comes to mind) was pretty fallow. Except. Except. I feel comfortable that I can generate a picture or two I like during these daily walks of mine, now that I'm a little further along, so winter has become, I guess, a friend. We'll see what I can do next month driving up the coast to the family party in Seattle.

How many times have you said that?

More than many, but this time - who knows? - may be a charm.