Beautified Again

Originally Posted Saturday, June 7, 2014

Don't bother getting the Fuji Instax camera.  You won't end up with any photographs.  At least I haven't.  Every time I take a photograph of someone, s/he keeps it (I'd prefer to say "they keep it" but it is grammatically incorrect, of course).  So far, I've a handful of photos of birdbaths, tea pots, coffee mugs, and light streaming through the shutters onto the wall.  All the happy people pictures are on other people's refrigerators. 

After staying home from the factory on Thursday (and I mean literally "staying home" as I did not go out but once as I recounted in yesterday's blog), I was determined to do something on Friday.  I did.  I went to the gym and I got beautified.  I guess that is something, but it is not what I had in mind.  My beautification appointment was set for 6:30 Friday night.  Why?  When I got to the beauty parlor, my girl's hair was wet and she was cutting some Russian boy's hair for free.  Her parents were there, too.  Good thing I had brought a bottle of expensive wine and the Fuji camera.  Everybody drank well and got free pictures.  I didn't get out until nine o'clock.  I bought a dinner from Chicken Licken and ate in front of the t.v. 

That's living. 

Otherwise, I was at my computer learning how to work with the pictures I take in the street in a different way.  As I said yesterday, it is a process, an evolution.  And for what I hope to do, I need a new camera.  So I researched, and yesterday I found many things online that I want.  They don't quit making things just because you are not looking I find.  There are so many things.  But what I want is a smaller full-framed digital camera, something I can carry all the time and not need neck or shoulder surgery.  The Leica M is the ideal.  It is also $7,000.  If you were rich and were truly my friend, I would have one.  But yesterday I discovered (like Columbus finding the "New World") the Sony A7 which is smaller than the Leica and costs only $1,500, and which will use all my Leica lenses.  There is one caveat, however, which took me some reading to discover.  There is a color shift with some of the Leica lenses. 

Well. . . o.k., there is another.  It is not as beautiful as the Leica which is something very important to me.

Drats!

For $8,000, there is the Leica Monochrom.  It is digital and only makes black and white images.  I would like one of these, too.  Why are the things I want always so far out of my reach? 

Enough of that.  It is Saturday and grey with the promise of scattered thunderstorms.  The afternoon will not be for going about with a camera.  Whatever I do must be early.  This afternoon will be made for reading and napping.  I promise you, though, that when I write to you tomorrow, that will not be what happened. 

I think the picture above is iconic.  It would be if it had been taken by Robert Frank or Gary Winnogrand.  It is odious and enigmatic. What is this woman doing?  To make pictures like this, you can't live in the south.  The light isn't right.  We have other light, but never this.  This is the light of the master photographers.  I will have to go there once again to make more images for "A Few Days in New York."