Everybody Else's Street

So. . . after watching "Everybody Street" and lamenting that I was just like those photographers only without the balls to give up everything to do what they've done and what I know I should have/could have done, I went back to look at my street photo images from my last three day trip to NYC.  I took a couple hours just going through all the images and deciding which ones I would never want to look at again and which I would.  As I went through them, I was like. . . similes do me no good here.  I was jumping and excited.  Then I decided to develop a few.  That is the part that takes time.  I had to decide how to develop them, what I thought they should look like.  And matching the "should" to the "is" can be tremendously frustrating as you face yours and maybe the technology's limitations.  But then you discover something and then something else and you are a genius all over again. . . until later when you realize you've overdone it.  Simple is best.  You have to find a style and it has to make sense.  Not style for style's sake but a style that is sympathetic and complimentary to the theme.  If you are good or smart or just lucky, you go back and begin again using what you just learned, and slowly this time an image begins to work.  After the initial thrill yesterday came all the self-doubt and frustration, then late in the afternoon. . . something.  By nightfall, I knew I could do this and would do this eventually.  Nothing comes easily.  Maybe the first discovery, but the mastering of the thing takes time.  There is still so much work to do, still much to discover.  And there is so much I will just have to make up.  In the end, it should look easy to do but be so much more than that so people who try can't quite.  The best will puzzle over how you've done what you've done.  The rest should just like it.

It was early evening though the sun still shone, time to get out of the house.  I had taken the day off from the factory and had not gone outside.  It is a mental illness I have been plagued with of late . I could just as easily have sat at my work desk as the one at home, but it wasn't the sitting.  As I say, it is an illness, I think.  I just needed a break from people.  It happens all the time now.  Dealing with them on "their level" is very tiring, and more and more my true self leaks out.  I say things I shouldn't say, do things I shouldn't do.  The banality of a daily existence, even with smart people, gets to be too much.

I needed to be alone.

The early evening light was beautiful, the temperature as soft as the light.  I had my Leica with me, though I did not feel authentic with it.  But I must make myself do this again.  When you get good, the camera is not even there.  It is not alien.  It is just part of your hand, a birthright.  And that is what makes the difference.  When you are no longer awkward with the camera, people are not awkward with you.  It is not a gift, just a practice.  And so I was practicing.  The camera felt like like an artificial limb, like a curse.

I took three pictures of nothing.

Inside the market, I wasn't sure what I would make for dinner.  Fresh Alaska salmon.  Half a pound of shrimp.  Broccoli.  Jasmine rice.  Another stop.  Scotch.  Wait. . . what's that?  I hadn't had it for years.  Kaluha.  What the hell.  I bought that, too.

Back home, I put the rice in the rice cooker, put the broccoli in the steamer, started the grill, prepared the liquid for steaming the shrimp.  I picked up the Leica.  Click.  Click.  The cat, of course.  Even she was spooked by my awkwardness.  The light was going now.  I had some phone calls I didn't answer.  I couldn't bear to talk to anyone.  The day and evening had become almost sacred now, a vow.  Who cooks like this for themselves, I wondered?  It is a meal to share, surely.  Quickly the broccoli cooked, the shrimp changed color, the salmon flaked.  A chilled glass of wine raised to all the heros then lowered to lips.  Before I sat down, I made a plate of chopped shrimp and salmon for the cat.

"Cheers, Bella.  Let's eat."

She, as ever, an eager dining companion.

After dinner, scotch, then desert--Kaluha and cream.  Damn.

I dreamed of pictures, I hope.  I don't remember.  But now--the fear.  Make pictures.  To do it, I must get out of the studio, out of the house.  I don't know if I'm the man to do it anymore.  I don't know.

For the next few days, though, you will see the show.  A Few Days in New York.