A very large part of this experiment is to find ways to make this more interesting for the Sole Proprietor and the potential reader. The Sole Proprietor believes he's got a way to go to make this more fun for the both of us and is thinking of things to change to make it happen.

He shoots pictures. If you saw him on any given day going to or coming from the office, you'd see him with a camera. The idea is to keep it with him, to get used to its heft and feel while packing it up and down the street and use it when appropriate to learn the controls and how they work, to get a feeling for what kind of actions produce good pictures and what kind don't.

There's the second part. All this technical stuff is fine, but its not what photography is about. The idea is, with your camera banging at your side making itself known like a cat pressing its paws (and claws) against your leg, it will remind you to look at the world differently. To see the mundane surroundings in ways that if photographed might lead to a moving image. Moving to the photographer, primarily, but moving to others as well.

The second part is hard. Its easy to forget that camera altogether, to make it into some kind of shoulder bag that's not very big but always there, a kind of background bump on the butt that will with time cease to exist. Its easy to stop looking, to stop trying to see. So he keeps after it. Maybe not the greatest effort ever made in this endeavor, but he tries and maybe, with time, it will show results.

So he's thinking, lets put more pictures here and there and play a little more with the presentation. He's only scratched the surface of what can be done with the tools, its time to scratch the surface of what can be done with the images and not be embarassed or upset because some things don't work. Practice practice Mr. Proprietor.

He's mulling these things over this evening because he shot a roll of film at a going away party for one of the company managers this noon using a strobe. No big deal, just some shots to take with him on his way back to Singapore. The way the Sole Proprietor has set the camera in the past for these events essentially allows to lens to shoot wide open making the depth of field quite narrow which means your focus had better be spot on or you'll have blurry shots. If you close the lens down to a higher f stop, you get a wider field of focus and if you're off a little bit your subject is still sharp and on the dime.

He knows that he must set the camera to a higher f stop. This will cause the camera to tell the strobe to put out more light, which is no big deal, the batteries are used up a little faster, to get the picture right. He didn't do that this afternoon. He's had this little conversation with himself before yet he obviously didn't listen to his own sage advice. He got some good pictures, but he would have gotten some more if he'd been paying attention. He knows this. Why did he forget?

So this evening he's talking to himself mumbling out loud and writing. He'll post some of those pictures over the weekend without dissertation. This is the dissertation. Nuff said.

He did write something for yesterday's journal and he may finish it and post it one day. He misquoted some lines from a Kurt Vonnegut novel but he's been unable to find the book in his library so he can straighten them out. The book is there somewhere and he'll find it, but November 18th may come a little later this year.