hanging out over on South Congress Ave. Having fun just people watching and detail snapping. A calm and relaxed walking adventure.

The Pool at the San José Motel. The steps...

It's the 8th of December. Christmas is just around the corner. I have just one job left to complete before I put the "closed for vacation" sign up on the door (metaphorically). I know a lot of people get stressed during the holiday season. Some are overbooked and, even worse, sometimes overbooked with family that brings its own level of stress. Some are running out to time to work a full forty hours, deal with kids, and still have time to shop for gifts. Gifts that may run up some credit card debt that might linger for months... Forget leisure time, exercise, healthy food and the pursuit of hobbies. 

I categorically refuse to participate in the stressful parts of the holidays. I'm happy to help out but you won't find me volunteering to organize the swim team party, bake a cake to take to a dinner party, or assemble bikes and complex toys for anyone's kids. Nor will I willingly go to the NPR singalong at the state capitol, or drink spiked apple cider or it's sinister companion -- eggnog. I won't decorate gingerbread houses and I no longer am able to visit my parents or grandparents because they have all passed away. 

And, since all my neighbors have strung enough lights to blind airline pilots traveling at 30,000 feet, I don't feel at all compelled to drag my butt up onto the roof of my house and string endless strands of light in order to feel included. Or even more emphatically I won't copy two of my neighbors by hiring services that send crews of workers to wrap every tree, post, railing or edge of roof with yet more lights. I've already had to install black out curtains in my bedroom as a result of their holiday gusto! Seriously, if I need a reading light at night all I have to do is open my curtains and steal a couple hundred thousand watts of their X-mas cheer.

Nope. My plan it to get a nice gift for my spouse, drop some cash on my son and distribute very nice bottles of wine to my friends who deserve it. Except for the non-drinking friends, I'll have to figure that one out. But the basic idea is to celebrate by taking time off for quiet reflection --- which basically means long walks with cameras.

Today is a perfect template for the next 17 days. The swim practices on Sunday are an hour later than the ones during the week or on Saturdays. My crew was in our lane and swimming punctually at 9 a.m. Several members at the practice seem to have worn themselves out the night before at the UT football game. But we muddled through anyway. 

After a hearty breakfast I thought about what I wanted to shoot today and decided it would be fun to see what was happening over on the ever popular S. Congress Ave. strip. I sat for a few minutes in quiet meditation, waiting for the universe to inform me about which camera and which lens would be best for me today. Surprisingly it was a camera I somewhat slighted in a blog post yesterday. The SL2. Seemed the universe was looking to redeem that camera's reputation. I attached the Sigma 45mm lens since I mentioned the mania for 40mm lenses several times in the same article. That's it. A high resolution camera and a smaller, more agile lens. Ready to go.

The walk seems to be the important part of the outing but I did have fun running into an old friend who has been out taking photos in Austin for at least the last three decades. He was having coffee outside at Jo's with three other photographer friends. One of them recognized me from a daylong cinema lighting workshop I used to give in support of a filmmaker's filmmaking classes. He reminded me of a fun demo we used to do. We'd get chunks of big, broken mirrors, put them in huge darkroom trays, shine a gelled light at an angle to the tray so that the light from the mirrors reflected on a wall about 45° to the other side of the tray. Then we'd jiggle the tray so the reflections would wiggle, dance and mimic moving water. It was always a popular thing to do with a lighting class, the students of which were just learning how many possibilities there are with light. Those were cinema workshops we did nearly 30 years ago!

I wanted to photograph more people out on the street today but to be honest most of them looked boring to me. Most were of the same general demographic. Most were overweight. Most were dressed in generic clothes. And, as I am as shallow and judgmental as they come, few opportunities gelled or had the potential to gel. So I took another path. Signage, ornaments, scenes and stuff. Most of the images will get tossed as soon as I finish posting this but that doesn't minimize for me the value of the walk. The exercise of seeing. The practice with the camera or, even as indulgent, a sort of reaffirming of the value to me of the Leica SL2. 

Some bloggers can't see the difference between cameras, or cameras and lenses. It always seems very, very obvious to me. I would suggest that having spent a lot of time shooting very few images but thinking ab out them too much is a less practical way to learn to see photographically than to spend even more time shooting a zillion images and a practice ranging across dozens of cameras because when the data sample gets big enough the differentiating characteristics and patterns of camera file personalities becomes clearer and clearer. More and more defined. Like everything else observation of differences takes time and work. Not just time.

The 45m Sigma lens is one of my favorites. Until recently I owned two of them but after a certain point I realized that the duplication was a bit silly and so sold the second copy. The one I kept has more wear marks, more miles, and to me that makes it more fun, more valuable. Since, as I stated above, I think the mileage in the process trumps the time spent not shooting much at all. 

All photo walks start out with a warm-up session during which your brain, your hands and you eyes all get integrated and start working in concert. I like to look for scenes with color or shapes, or shapes and colors. I shoot a lot knowing that I can delete mountains of images after I give them a quick look through. Very little needs to be archived. More needs to be thrown away.

After several hours of watching, walking shooting and talking with people I knew or was meeting for the first time (the owner of the Citroen for example) I realized there was left over spaghetti with meat sauce in a container, in the refrigerator at home, just waiting for some lucky soul to warm it up in the microwave and feast on it. I decided to rush home and beat the crowds. It was good. Really good. As much fun to eat as the SL2 was to shoot. You know....it's really a darn good camera. And fun to shoot with. More like that. 

The Stetson classic, Open Road hat always beckons to me to buy. The same as the Ricoh GRIIIx used to. But I'm almost certain that if I drop $285 on a hat I'll discover when meeting younger and blatantly honest friends, that I look dorky in the hat and wasted the money I could have spent on them....

Still. The do look pretty cool.

Imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered that these cakes are fake. Just fake.

A permanent ornamental feature at Home Slice Pizza.

Take your holiday season nice and slow. It's not a contest.