A cool and slurpy morning. What to do? I know. How about a walk in the rain with a camera?

 

It was chilly this morning. Well, not by the standards of the northern reaches but still enough to entice me to pull the warm covers up tight and get an extra half hour of sleep. Something novel happened next. I awoke to the sound of persistent, random raindrops smacking against the roofing shingles. Amazing that rain could seem so novel but such is the experience of living through a series of long droughts. 

It was 48° here when I finally climbed out of bed and threw back the blackout curtains. The morning outside was foggy gray. So was my head. Both literally and metaphorically. I tossed on a favorite sweatshirt, the pants I wore yesterday, and the day before, and capped off the outfit with an old pair of comfortable, somewhat water resistant, walking shoes. Made my way down the long hall to the kitchen to carefully make another perfect cup of coffee.  

I found an old, worn rain jacket in a bedroom closet, grabbed a small, point and shoot camera and drove onto the center of town to walk through the sometimes mist sometimes rain and to see what the town looks like when thoroughly damp. It looks...shiny-er. Like when the production crew sprays down a street with water on a movie set. Cue the water truck.

At first I tried to cover my head from the rain with the jacket's hood and also to keep the small camera under the wrap of the garment. But the hood screwed with my peripheral vision and I quickly abandoned it, tossing it back and then vaguely worrying about it slowly filling up with rain water. 

I was wearing my eyeglasses when I left the car but without the protection of the jacket's hood they soon became rather useless as tiny rain drops multiplied, covering the front of the lens and making everything seem novel and somehow poorly filtered. I wiped the raindrops off on the front of my sweatshirt and put them into a convenient coat pocket. Writing this reminds me, in the moment, that I need to go and rescue the glasses from that coat that's hanging on a hook in the studio simultaneously drying off and also dripping onto the hard floor....otherwise I'll consider the glasses lost and spend forever searching them down.

Taking off my glasses was good and bad. Good, in that I could now see the full frame in the camera's viewfinder without having to move my eye around, but bad in that I needed to stop, find a relatively dry spot, the overhang of an awning, to adjust the diopter for the camera's viewfinder. Problems I didn't have earlier in my career. Before glasses. Oh shucks. The ravages of age. 

Austin has a property that is a distinct negative for photographers who like to walk the streets and look for interesting things/people to document. That property is a lack of pedestrian traffic anywhere. The city possesses such an overwhelming car culture that people stare, almost surprised, through their windshields, at lone pedestrians who are crazy enough to walk through the rain, into and out of the crosswalks, with a camera in their hands and no "common sense" in their heads. This is doubly so when it rains, or gets too cold or too hot. But what it means for the ambulatory artist is a paucity of humanity out and and around to add some spice to our photography.

I settled for the sides of buildings. Naked trees. Repeating patterns. The skeleton of of downtown. The less exciting fallbacks of a frustrated, would be, art photographer. 

Then, when my hair, the lower legs of my trousers and the top of my camera were thoroughly soaked, and I had completed the walking circuit I had in mind, I came home to monk-like prepare a solitary lunch of greek yogurt, Swiss muesli, walnuts and fresh blackberries. 

I ate my usual concoction while watching a doltish vlogger complain about the awkward design of the Leica Q3-43 camera as it relates to handhold-able comfort as he held the camera in one hand at the end of a fully extended arm and shot by squinting at the rear screen.

I sent him a note suggesting that a two hand hold of a camera (any camera) was the correct way to use it and....a much more comfortable hold on any camera. He responded by saying that I should be aware that he has "only two hands..." By which I think he was suggesting that he needed to do the precarious and painful one handed, arm fully extended, vertical hold on his $7,000 camera so he could have his other hand free to navigate and manipulate his video camera. Very droll. And quite stupid. Especially if you are trying to explain/complain about camera haptics to an audience of experienced professionals. The camera in question hardly being "entry level." And a camera body design possessed of 70+ years of nearly unchanged tenure testifying to it's comfortable use by millions of right-minded photographers.

The photos here aren't my best work but I did diligently use both hands on the camera in their creation. I blame a photographer named, Manny Ortiz for propagating the silly process of holding heavy cameras at arm's length so he can create a disjointed video of the photography of ample, female subjects cavorting like models while he extols the virtues and vices of whatever the latest camera sent to him by the clever P.R. agencies of the camera makers. It's a vicious cycle on YouTube. One person shows off bad technique and the world rushes to emulate. Tragic. It's all so "one handed."

I'm back home safe and dry in my office. The little space heater is roaring in the background. I need to work on post processing a project for a client but here I am, once again, pounding away on my keyboard fully cognizant that some overly anxious and pathologically kind reader will take me to task for having the temerity to call out a "fellow" photographer for his egregious display of bad camera handling. And the vlogger's subsequent complaint about an innocent camera's hampered haptics. Again, Tragic. 

Jeez, Golly. It's well past time for a haircut...

The city of Austin decorates a public park in an upbeat and happy way for the upcoming holidays. I hear one of the other parks is showing statues of zombies hungry for brains. Okay. Onward.

The repeating pattern goes one way.

The repeating pattern goes the other way.

The jolliest of Christmas decor in all of downtown is found, appropriately enough on the window of a night club. Making that connection between holiday cheer and pricey drinks. 

Brick wall test?  No. Just a brick wall.

Gloom scrolling. 

And this was the general feeling throughout the day.

Chilly and wet. Gray and damp. Nothing much going on.