Any day is a good day when you can say it looks good. A narrower criteria than “any day is a good day when you can get yourself up” (and tie your own shoes), but we're being selfish here, holding out our bowl and asking for more when all the while we're aware there's another phrase, a fall back position when all else fails: "any day is a good day in which you awake".

Later. A look at the Solano pictures I posted yesterday and then a run through the pictures I rejected. Why, exactly, had they been rejected? What was I seeing yesterday I'm not seeing today? What was I not seeing yesterday I'm seeing today? How long have I been shooting and I'm asking myself these questions? This led to the creation of another Solano Stroll section for artandlife.

Yesterday I overlooked or discarded every one in this second group of twenty-one photographs on my first go around. Now I've created another page and moved them up to artandlife. Well, well.. If we took ourself seriously we'd be perplexed. None of this photography business seems to make sense. Which is probably one of the things that attracts me to it. Diddle-dee-dit.

Later still. A walk down to the WiFi café during the noon hour to post the second section of Solano pictures, finding when I arrived I'd not copied some of the pictures I'd made changes to in the first section to my laptop. I talk about this foggy headed business, perhaps I shouldn't mention incidents such as these that prove it's all too real. Perhaps a walk later to clear the head.

A jury summons in the mail today, file that away and mark it on the calendar. That's one I don't want this foggy head to forget. I'm not sure that's on their list of valid excuses. “Guilty!” the foggy headed fellow shouted, a camera in his hand. “Guilty! Guilty!” I'm not sure I'd want to be a defendant with me sitting on the jury. “Excused for cause!” the defense attorney should say. If the poor bastard had a competent defense attorney. I'm sure there are such. For a defendant with funds.

You're a bleeding heart liberal. Guilty of what?

What ya got?

Later still. I'm not sure some of these symptoms - the double vision, the sinus-upper palate acting up (more than in the past) - aren't side effects from these sprays and powders I've been inhaling for the allergies and lungs. We'll see. One of them, at least, leaves a wicked bad taste in the mouth. Once I've completed these treatments, whatever the medicos say, I'm going off them for a bunch of months. Whatever problems I was having with congested lungs weren't nearly as bad as this other crap. You read the warnings they include with the meds, the long lists of known side effects, many of them describing what I've been experiencing since I started. The problem is whatever you're experiencing could easily be included, given how many there are on the list. You can see I'm starting to worry about this. Even with worry it takes me time to get off my duff.

Later again. A final run by the WiFi café to post corrections to the Solano pictures. I think I've got them in hand. I sometimes wonder if I should run more images that give context to the event. My interest is in candid portraits, catching self absorbed expressions on people's faces, unaware for the moment of the camera and their surroundings. Showing their non-public faces. Candids.

Sometimes I think, well, how would I photograph something like the Solano Stroll or any of the other festivals or parades focusing on showing the essence of the thing. More pictures of the Solano Avenue crowd might give a better feeling for how the thing looks. Pictures of the preponderance of high school and grade school marching units in the parade. Things I once thought about many years ago in college when I did some free lance work for the local newspaper and had to keep their readership in mind. Then again, maybe not.

I take it these photographs were left over and you wanted an excuse to show them?

Pretty much. I'm still mulling over the group of them in my head, wondering what is is I'm seeing, why I took this picture and not that. I say I'm a candid photographer, and that's both accurate and good, but ultimately I'm not sure you can ever be clear on what's driving you to take this or that picture and whether, in your opinion or in anyone's else's opinion, it's any good. Not that it's important, of course. Truth be told.