I left my camera at home for Christmas. It was the right thing to do...

I've carried a camera with me everywhere now for a long time. At times I feel like Linus from the Charlie Brown cartoons. He is always depicted with his "security" blanket. His constant source of self-comfort. There are people who love fashion and clothes and who spend lots of time going through their closets and standing in front of mirrors trying, each day, to pick out the perfect outfit. And I can feel the resemblance as I go through a filing cabinet drawer trying to pick out what I feel will be just the right camera for an outing. Only, it never really is. I always end up somewhere wishing I'd made a different choice. 

So, this year I was heading down to San Antonio to have Christmas dinner with an extended group of in-laws, my wife and my son. At the last minute I decided that the way to make the perfect choice of camera would be to not make a choice. Not bring a camera. Instead of being an "observer" at the evening's festivities I would instead be a more active participant. And I wouldn't have my "security" camera to hide behind, or speak to my long constructed identity. Instead, I'd be...part of the family. 

Everyone had a smart phone. Lots of photos were taken. The elementary aged kids of my niece were great and well documented by various camera happy phone shooters. There was a group shot done on a phone by a nephew's fiancée which was exemplary and shared via group text minutes later. We all look well fed, happy, congenial. The gear (an iPhone) and the person wielding the gear were more than competent to make us all look good. And she did it in the first shot. Which made me conscious of the times in the past when I've tortured a group by taking a bunch of shots in the pursuit of ever elusive perfection. 

Interesting to me was the fact that I never felt I was missing a chance to do a great photograph. There isn't always a reason to photograph. Not always a reason to document everything. In fact, the flan was delicious but visually? It's just a flan. More photos of wine bottles? Not needed. More photos of our 95 year old relative? She might have indulged my need to photograph but it might also have made her uncomfortable, and who needs to feel over-documented at a holiday dinner? 

We all had a lovely time. We exchanged gifts and stories and happy news. All without a leather strap over one of my shoulders or a camera bouncing around on my belly. We drove back late in the evening through a mix of fog, mist and light rain. When I walked into the house there was a lonely camera sitting on the edge of the dining room table. Waiting patiently for me to use it with complete attention --- but not as just a fashion accessory. Not a part of my uniform. All of which made me feel a bit chastened as I remembered all the times when I felt having a camera always at hand was somehow important. 

Life goes on whether we document it or not. We can choose the moments to be out enjoying photography but we can also, I think, develop the realization that so much of life is meant to be lived, enjoyed and participated in rather than always being the guy waiting on the sidelines for a potential picture to  present itself. Because....why?

Today I was back in Austin. Everyone was busy and engaged. I had the day to myself and I did feel like going for a walk, and also I felt like inviting a camera along for the time I'd be out on the streets, walking and looking at post holiday downtown. 

I brought along an M240 with a 50mm lens on it. A perfect choice for a quiet walk. Good company. And instead of becoming a distraction in the midst of a party I was merely a tourist in my own town, looking for the things that make my town fun. 

A few odds and ends came via Fedex today. Really small and simple stuff. A 43mm lens cap. The 43mm lens caps always seem to be the ones that get lost most frequently. They are small and I guess when I drop them they are good at rolling under big furniture and hiding there. I got a protection filter for a favorite 35mm lens that kept getting rain drops on the front element last time I was out. I broke with the tradition of buying the expensive filters and went a bit down market. Works just fine. 

I also bought a second honeycomb grid Attachment for a recently arrived LED panel. One of the Godox Compac 100s. I love the narrowed and more controlled beam that results so I can now have more control but with nearly the same soft light. At $50 it's a nice modifier to have at hand. More thrill with less spill.

At this juncture I am proud to say that I didn't drop another $7,000 to $14,000 to buy either a Leica Q3 - 4/3 or a Leica SL3, or both of them; even though I thought I really wanted each of them. Now having not bought them and resisting the lure of them I seem much happier to use the older M240 cameras. Interesting that such nice files can come from 12 year old cameras. Nice for me since I already have them to shoot with. But it feels odd to have gone through an entire year without spending on multiple cameras. I did pick up a Leica SL2-S, used. But I was able to rationalize that one as a "work" camera. I'm not sure I'd be able to believe my own rationalization process if I tried to trick myself into thinking that a Q3-something was needed for "work." 

We're heading into 2025. I'm not sure what to expect but I'm pretty certain it will all be both different; completely different, but also more of the same. 

More to come. Thanks for reading. Enjoy shooting with what you have. It might even be revelatory. It was for me this season. And this year. 

Fun with photography. Sorry, no deep dive into theory. No manifestos. Just the joy of being out and around.

The fellow on the right is David. We've known each other for years. Swell guy.

We keep running into each other at Jo's Coffee on S. Congress. He's always surrounded by friends. They even have a little "reserved" sign on their table. The only one I know about in the whole establishment. Their mission? Enjoy a beautiful, seasonally temperate day in Austin. With cameras.

This is revenge since David posted an image of me a week ago on Instagram.

And there is a diagonal to the frame. Oops. I forgot. No theory other than fun.

Being shy, quiet and introspective I wished David and his crew well

and then retreated to the courtyard at Hotel San José to enjoy 

the solitude and calmness of the space... Cappuccino at the ready.

Tourists line up to take photos of one another standing in front of a green wall on which, in red spray paint, is written: "I love you so much." It gets crowded there on weekends. So much love. 

My friend Christopher is a street photographer. Full time. Full stop. 

We ran into each other yesterday afternoon and roamed around the giant, outdoor

mall that is South Congress Avenue. Snapping and talking about photos.

The courtyard at the Austin Motel has a yearly Christmas tree extravaganza which is a 

contrasty counterpoint to the lovely, semi-erotic mosaics that dot the walls....

I love that the woman depicted in this mosaic is making a selfie with a cellphone.

At the boot shop called, Freebirds. 

Same. 

More of the same. But with flowers. 

Christmas decorated Eldorado. 

the crowd on the corner. In ....  "monochrome." 

Whippet Lunch #1

Whippet Lunch #2

Ah. Look. The next door neighbors got a Lamborghini...

How will I ever keep up? 

Life is good. Even better when you can run into multiple photographer friends in a short period of time. Although I'm thinking Christopher might be a bad influence since we ended up at "The Salty." The premier donut shop in all of central Texas.... where, mysteriously, I felt compelled to buy and consume a pistachio glazed donut. $5 for a donut? That's an Austin Style pastry...

I've been so happy just to take my Q2 with me everywhere. It's a great little camera. It's happy making black and white images. It's happy making color images. And the SCL-6 battery (the new ones) last just about forever. 

Tomorrow we'll have dinner with the kid. I spent some time this morning at Whole Foods shopping for just the right grass fed Ribeyes. And time this afternoon at the local wine shop searching for the perfect bottle of red wine to accompany. Life, in this moment, is so good. I'm having an APO Summilux sort of day.... Hope the same for you, dear reader.

 

End of year summary. Fun, weird, annoying 2024.

 

This year was about camera consolidation for me. I've long since passed the point at which the quality differences between "new camera A" and "old camera B" are at all visible to me; and certainly not to my clients, friends and family. Instead of panting over new cameras arriving on the scene this year I've spent the time using the stuff I already have. And, surprise, surprise! All the cameras I have spread around the studio work great for anything I press them to accomplish. And all the excess ones have been given away or sold.

I'm a firm believer that when we hit 24 megapixels of resolution we absolutely hit the sweet spot of imaging science. Across all the cameras I routinely play with 24 megapixels is the standard. I have two cameras that have higher megapixel counts (47.5) but I really can't see the difference between them and the lower res models unless I'm really, really pixel peeping and squinting really hard at images. Certainly, if I were routinely printing four foot by six foot panels for clients I might see a bigger difference but, stepping out of my generational role as a curmudgeon opposed to all digital progress, I have to admit that I'd probably get at least as much advantage just using one of the many powerful tools in PhotoShop to res up the files to match. The software for imaging has gotten so incredibly good that I think the availability of those post processing tools will really retard progress in getting newer and newer cameras into the market. Because...why?

If the old bugaboos of file noise and file size are the metrics most people still care about I have to say that A.I. DeNoise and Enhance Image in the Adobe apps match, in older camera files, what people are paying for in newly introduced cameras. So... why bother to buy more? And certainly, why upgrade?

I sold off my medium format digital equipment this year. It just wasn't as much fun to use as the full frame stuff. Sure, if I locked down the camera onto a tripod for every shot and used all the right techniques I might get strikingly better images from the larger sensors but that's a long way to go versus enjoying the more agile and haptic-ly mature handling of the 35mm sensor sized cameras. And the smaller lenses. And in the end, after using both systems in real jobs, the output just didn't match the investment. 

I have some predictions for the year(s) ahead. Now that camera makers have started putting big, high res sensors in smaller cameras I think the age of big, burly "pro" cameras is coming to an end. Leica's most popular camera is the Q3 --- and the Q3-43 variant. Not the big SL2 or slightly smaller SL3. I'd wager that the same is true across other brand's product lines as well. The resurgence of compact cameras; what we used to call "point and shoots" is a good thing. Nearly all photographs are headed to screens with no detours to a desktop printer or a printing lab. Sure, some people still get prints made but even there the high end compacts have more than enough image quality potential to deliver great results. 

Compacts originally died out because the sensors were small and the lenses were mostly slow. Big, fast sensors were too expensive for the compact price points, early on, but now Sony, Fuji and others have shown the way. It was surprising this year to see Leica join the compact camera circus with their D-Lux8 but I think that's a harbinger of what's to come across the product lines. And, from everyone I've talked to it's the advantages of handling the cameras that makes them a better choice for serious shooters than smartphones. 

People are also finally figuring out that a stolen phone can have dramatic implications for privacy, account security, identity theft and a raft of other issues that current compact cameras don't share. And not having to have a phone in one's hands out in the streets means less exposure to all kinds of non-material theft. A stolen camera? Yeah, you lose a few images and the cost of a camera. Stolen phone? Hacked Bluetooth? Hacked Wi-fi? Those things can result in thousands of dollars of loss from multiple financial accounts. We might even see a welcome regression in people's habitual use of phones to defer boredom... (wishful thinking). Do you turn off Bluetooth when you are out walking with your phone? Maybe you should...

Judging from my own experience and my attitude I am comfortable predicting that once the "newly retired" generation passes away home inkjet printing will quickly become a thing of the past. Like CD players and DVDs. If you need or want prints it's much more cost effective and convenient to send files to a high quality printing service and work instead on making sure your screen calibration matches that of your chosen output supplier. 

If I have services print stuff for shows or displays the minimum print size I'm looking for is usually 24x24 inches of live image surrounded by three or four  inches of white border. Home inkjet printers that can do this well are outrageously expensive to own, service, feed, etc. Like owning a Ferrari that you only drive for a couple days a year. If you are printing at home every day then more power to you but...what the heck are you doing with all those prints? And what are you getting that a good, custom printing service can't more reliably deliver? Head clogs?

Moving on. Let's discuss lighting. I was at the big, bricks and mortar camera store this month looking at lighting. I actually still do work that requires flash from time to time and while I didn't need any more flashes in the moment I was curious what the camera store might have. Five years ago their inventory was overflowing with Godox, Westscott, Profoto and other flash equipment. Things were moving more and more toward flash gear that used big, rechargeable lithium batteries to replace the cord to the wall socket but you could walk in and buy wonderfully small, pack and head systems as well as a range of monolight flashes that ranged from 100 watts seconds to at least 600 watt seconds. All over town I'd see wedding photographers, family photographers and wannabe fashion photographers out in the wild using these bigger flashes with umbrellas or soft boxes on them doing the good, old fill flash with sunlight. 

On my recent trip through the photographic candy store I found exactly three studio/pro flash units but the number and kinds of LED lights had taken over 95% of the shelf space. A non-stop embrace of continuous lighting. There has been a quick and profound change in people's lighting techniques. Big Flashes are now an occasional rental item and not the everyday tools that we considered them to be.

The same can be said for tripods. I can't give them away. Younger photographers look at me with a mystified, almost pity filled stare when I try to pass tripods on to them. One actually asked, "Do you not know about image stabilization in cameras?" Seems the only people with even a passing interest in tripods are videographers. And even there getting them to use a tripod instead of a gimbal requires the insistent demands of a client who really doesn't want pay for shaky "footage." 

I still use tripods. But when I use them in front of new, younger assistants I feel like a dinosaur. And not a predator dinosaur but more like prey. 

It's been a strange year. Clients still call but they've stopped asking for bids or estimates almost altogether. I still reflexively send along contracts with budgets embedded in them but most clients don't care. They have the money to spend. They know costs are rising...

It's been a strange year. I bought car I really didn't need and while I like it a lot I sometimes stop and wonder what the heck I was thinking. It's not a financial hardship but I'd have a hard time explaining a new car as an impulse purchase to my depression era parents; if they were still around...

It's a strange year. Every time I think about retiring completely I find myself being bored. And terrified of being bored. And every time I think about fully retiring my mail box starts to fill up with requests from existing and new clients to undertake more new projects. Maybe the marketing secret here is to just posture retirement and wait for the deluge of new work. 

It's a strange year in that we've once again voted in our own incipient hardship era. Well, not for wealthy stock holders but for the poor and the middle classes. If most of your money comes from dividends and wealth relentlessly being accrued in the markets even while you sleep you probably don't care. You can "posture" liberal but take advantage of the markets for your own gain. Ethically bankrupt but legally permissible. And don't get me started on the morality of our modern politics. On either side. Stay invested? Move to Switzerland? Huddle down and look for sales at the Dollar Stores? It's a mess. 

This seems to be the year (2024) when photography-oriented blogs just fell apart and collapsed. Old codgers wanna write about their golden years instead of anything contemporary and topical. I'm so bored with the blogs I used to love that when waiting for a tardy appointment to commence I find myself scrolling through my own archive of posts from this site to re-read. The fortunate thing about getting older and forgetting stuff is that some of the work here from ten years ago seems fresh and new to me when I read it again. Mostly I like it because it's relentlessly about cameras, lighting, jobs and photography --- which is the job. And not about the best weedwhacker for the money or how one blogger or another "deserves" to join the 1% while at the same time delivering mostly sunset content. 

Photography as my generation knew it is collapsing. But not to worry. The next generation and the next will breathe life into photography the way they like and value it. No more speed graphics! A lot more interactive sharing? And smaller cameras joined up with a lot more experiences. 

Why do I photograph? It's not to touch cameras and play with gear. I do it because I love the way people look when I photograph them. I love the experience of meeting people and making a lasting record of them. This is the opposite, I think, of wanting to "be" a photographer but not being at all sure of what it is you want to photograph. It's not enough to master the process. You have to have a passion for the subject that gets you out and working on stuff. But for me it's always the people component. Falling in love with my subjects over and over again. At some point the camera is just ancillary. 

Finally, this is the year that I realized that archiving the bulk of our work is a meaningless, ego driven activity that just sucks up time I can better use living and photographing for the fun of it. If you aren't a Magnum photographer or one of the collected fashion or editorial photographers who've made a name for themselves with museums and galleries the idea that anything beyond your 100 favorite photographs surviving after your inevitable demise is just an idea that serves to insulate you from the pain of mortality.  The more you throw away the happier your heirs will be. 

In spite of everything I've written here I still love photography, love heading out after swim practice to walk the streets, sit around drinking coffee, catching up with old and new friends, all while looking for fun new ways to photograph them, my city and my life. My tightest and most appreciative audience? Well, that would be me.

Young woman in a yellow Santa Claus outfit passing out candy canes for a clothing and jewelry boutique on trendy, South Congress Ave. Adorable.

Someone recently said that scanned black and white film can only be viewed authentically when printed on paper. Right.... I guess we'll shut down the internet....

 

The old idea that everything black and white has to be printed on traditional photographic paper to be legit is such hogwash. But I guess trying to change those minds... it's like teaching someone to swim who just can't let go of his or her arm floaties. Can't let go of the side of the pool. The fear of something new is just too strong... the ambiguity is paralyzing.

I wanted thousands of people to see this image of Lou but I couldn't afford (in either time or money) to print thousands of 16x20 inch, fiber, double weight Agfa Portriga Rapid prints to share. And the postage would have played havoc with my budget...if I had a budget.

We should all have three or four huge, major galleries dedicated to photography within a few miles of our homes; in every city and town in the country. And all of them should welcome new talent all the time. Right?

Dream on.

Understand that black and white images can be shared effectively on a good screen. 

In fact, for the last twenty years our careers have been predicated on that being true.

Film day at the office. A scan from a black and white negative.

I was going on and on about how easy and how high quality it is to "scan" older, medium format film with my current copy set-up. Basically just a camera, a lens, a copy stand and a light source. My mentor, Henry White, stopped me in my tracks. He said, "This is photography not performance art. Don't 'tell' me, show me!" 

I selected a 6cm by 6cm "monochrome" negative from a stack near the scanning table, cleaned it off and put it into the Negative Supply Company film holder, put that on the very well color corrected light source, focused my 70mm macro lens and shot a frame in one of my favorite cameras which was anchored on a copy stand. 

This was a bit of a  torture test for the whole system because the negative we chose was an Agfapan 25 APX film sample. It's a film that's inherently very contrasty. It's a very high resolution film and the way I developed it back in the day added to its overall contrast. All that being said, the scanning set up seems perfect for preserving highlight detail (if there is any) in black and white films. Even in the most egregious samples.

I brought the images into Lightroom Classic where I inverted the image from a negative to a positive and then created a curve for the file that would render skin tones exactly the way I wanted them. Dust spotting then ensued (some things never change....).

The distinquished Dr. White, a veteran of decades of work in darkrooms, and behind all manner of cameras, jumped out of his seat and yelled, "This is witchcraft. It's trickery. Digital copies of negatives are supposed to suck. This is supposed to be hard." But it was evident to him that "scanning" older black and white negatives in order to use them in the digital space could be both very high quality, cheap and quick. Choose any three. Oh hell, choose all three. 

And then it dawned on both of us that people called "bloggers" make everything seem much harder than it really is so they have something weighty and somewhat mysterious (to people who've never had to scan film before. Or people who have never shot film in their lives) in order to generate reams of dark magic folderol to write about. 

Later, in a parking lot at the nearest photo lab we did a ritual burning and sledgehammer destruction of several older film scanners. They were very much tools of oppression and unrewarding labor. 

As Mrs. Lovich, my creative writing about mathematics teacher always said: "Show your work!" 

Show your work indeed!

A note to writers: if you are discussing photography then show pictures or "it didn't happen." 

 

Just a few notes on stuff. A firmware update drops!

 

That company everyone loves? Leica? They've done a little holiday favor for SL2 owners/users. They dropped Firmware Update 6.1 on us. Now we can use the joystick on the back of the camera not only to move the cursor around but you can once again push said button and have instant, punch-in magnification. Don't know about you but I sure appreciate it. A lot. Don't know why it vanished in a previous update but we've been made whole again. 

The firmware 6.1 update fixes a few other things. Mostly speed improvements in AF. But for me the return of a vital control for manual focusing is splendid. 

Panasonic launched/announced a couple of new cameras yesterday. The one of interest to me is the G97. I won't be buying one but I had a G95 for while and it was a damn good entry level camera with lots of video features and tons of controls. It's coming mid-February and you'll be able to snag a kit with a 12-60mm Panasonic lens (24-120mm FF equivalent) for around $895. Might make a good travel camera. Especially if you also pick up a fast normal focal length for use in low light. 

Of all the compact cameras we've been pining for over the last few months it appears that the Leica DLux8 is showing the most inventory endurance. Last I checked it was still in stock at several Leica Stores. You can snag one before X-mas for the actual list price. The last time I checked America's biggest online retailer they had some X-100VI Fujis in stock----if you were willing to cough up nearly 50% over list. Not that hungry for another one. 

All the extra crap that had built up around the studio over the last few years got sold off. My friend sold it for me on FredMiranda.com. All without a snag. Anything that didn't go there got sent to MPB.com. We've already been paid for most of it so I'll be able to afford the good Champagne now. The recently discontinued Fuji GFX 50Sii sold so fast it made my head spin. There is apparently a high demand for used MF cameras and lenses out there in the wilderness. I must confess. Though I really liked the actual results from the Fuji MF I was never really happy (at all) with the  handling of that camera... And that's reason enough to ditch it. 

Yesterday I wrote about gearing up for the last commercial job of the year. I shouldn't make statements like that anymore because it seems to just jinx me. In the time since I wrote that I've gotten requests from two other clients for corporate portrait work. I might try putting them off till 2025. We'll see. 

We're closing in on that time again. It's just about time to upgrade office computers. My iMacPro hails from late 2017 and it's already outside my usual update schedule. Frankly, while Apple has great products across their line-up I really wanted them to come to market with a new iMacPro. The same 27 inch screen size. Whatever the fastest M4 processor happens to be. Lots of RAM and a big ass SSD. But so far, when it comes to an "all-in-one" package the only choice seems to be the regular iMac line-up. 

I guess I'll muddle around until I get it all figured out. No compelling reason to move quickly as the iMacPro in hand is still handling all the software updates without issue. Just makes me nervous to get too much of a bargain out of a machine... The iMacPro has been/is an amazing machine, even if it does use Intel Xeon processors...

Retirement notes. According to my fairly accurate paperwork I did about 125 different projects in 2018. In 2024 I saw that number drop to about 23. The actual number of days I worked this years hovers around 60. That gave me 305 days to swim, run, cook, write, read, walk, and relax. And swim. It's been a remarkably different year. But, I'm actually swimming faster and better than I have for the last ten years. I'm enjoying everything I am reading more and more. Maybe because I have ample time to process the writing.  

I am self-funding the difference in income from the big years with the idea of putting off taking Social Security until 70. Seems pretty easy to just chill out and spend my own money for a while. But I have actually made enough in billing in 2024 to keep the wheels turning, the lights on and the bills paid from those scant 60 days of work. Makes me wonder what the hell I was doing working all those "extra" days in the past. 

Swimming. Learned a brand new training secret = stretching. Not the arms so much but the ankles. Seems ankle flexibility is critical to fast and powerful kicking because the more flexible the ankles the better the "whip" effect of the kick. I started doing some ankle flexibility work on a daily basis a couple of weeks ago --- ten minutes at a time --- and I'm seeing freestyle and backstroke times dropping. Nice. If you are getting old and creaky it might be time to up your stretching. Flexibility is a good thing. 

Okay. Go do something fun. 

If you haven't, as a group, decided on what to get your favorite, acerbic blogger you might consider something radically different, like an M10 Monochrome. I promise not to join a monochrome cult...

In Praise of Street Photography. Which we used to just call....photography.

Nearly every study about health, remaining healthy, being healthy, reaching for longevity, etc. makes it very clear that a sedentary lifestyle (which means sitting on your ass all day long at work and then taking a "long" walk from your car to your couch for an extended evening of sitting in front of your TV, computer screen, etc.) takes years off your life expectancy. Full stop. Other implications are that being isolated in your office or home isolates you from the shared reality of existence. At a certain point, as you get more and more cloistered, your ideas about reality, society, wealth, and general healthiness become a distillation of whatever media you consume. And I was going to say, "For Better or Worse" but I think I'll go with "For worse or worser." And yeah, I know "worser" isn't a real word. 

The reliance on media for cues about society and the general condition of life is fraught with real peril. More media = more sadness. More isolation, and an increasingly narrow point of view. Social isolation robs one of the mental health guardrails that an engaged and vibrant embrace of life outside your door and into your community can provide. So, why are so many photographers seemingly content to sit at home and endlessly scroll through blogs, vlogs, videos and the like instead of tying those nice walking shoes (recommended by one influencer or another...), grabbing a cool camera (of which you have many; I am sure) and heading out the door into a vibrant cityscape in order to get exercise, visual inspiration, a better sense of who lives near us and with us and, as an extra bonus, to get some practice framing, exposing and capturing interesting images with your camera? 

Staying home. It's like a giant mental health breakdown...

Street photography is one enjoyable cure for cultural isolation. One can go to events and venues that cater to people who are different from the insulated and "safe" people who surround you in whatever bubble of comfort you've created for yourself. I try to go to events, public gatherings, farmers markets, parades, and sometimes just the day to day flow of life as often as I can. And not just in my own neighborhood, my own church, or nestled into my own social and economic demographic but in as wide a choice of experiences as I can find. 

Street photography is merely the practice of going outside, being among the public at large and getting comfortable documenting real life. Current life. Diverse cultures. New stuff. You can watch the news and get riled about isolated events, curated to make you feel sad, angry and aggrieve or you can step outside and see how actual people live day-to-day. It's different. I assure you. 

I went out to do a few errands this afternoon. I parked at the grocery store and walked the six or seven blocks to my bank in downtown to deposit a check. Sure, yes, Europeans, I know I can deposit a check from the comfort and "safety" of my home with a phone. And I know that checks have become a meaningless form of payment for most of the "first" world country dwellers. But have you considered that the physical act of depositing a  paper check at a non-virtual bank can provide you with a nice walk through the urban landscape? That you can stop and photograph things or people you didn't know existed but which suddenly present themselves in front of your eyes and your camera? That you can greet the bank tellers who, here in Austin at least, still exist? That you can walk back to the grocery store on a different route and see even more new things? That you can detour down an interesting street? That you can extend that walk for as long as you like?

And then you can head back to the grocery store. Yes, all my young GenZ friends, I know I can order groceries online and have them delivered to my house by someone trying to make a living. But I would miss an opportunity, an excuse, to get up from my chair in front of my computer and .... experience more shared, real life. And I get to look through the various pints of blackberries and choose the one I think is freshest. I can investigate the breads on offer and see which one best matches my habit of eating hearty toast with olive oil on the side before swim practice. And I can see what other people are buying, how they are dressing, how they are interacting and how they flow through their lives, which are different--- but the same as mine. 

I read about wealth distribution on a photo blog site yesterday. There are rich and poor people. But the whole exercise immediately reminded me of the sage saying that "comparison is the thief of happiness." 

There is an equalizing effect in walking together through the streets and down the sidewalks. A joint experience that's missing, really, in all these online media. The media create granular silos of thought and expectations that fly in the face of the idea that we're all going through life while trying to be as happy or as comfortable as we can be. Chasing love, companionship, belonging and joy. Belonging being the key to the rest.

On the street there is poverty but after the hurdle of poverty is overcome everyone else is more or less equal in the moment. And the camera is there to document that feeling of community. From documenting a random hug between old friends, a shared coffee with a small group out shopping together, families out sharing meals, and even the occasional documentation of budding love. It's all so life affirming. Such a great cure for a sedentary and lonely life...

Street photography is, in the moment, on the street,  a social equalizer. One afternoon I photographed billionaire, Michael Dell as he walked past me on the sidewalk near the Austin convention center. A few blocks away I stopped to talk to a person experiencing homelessness.  I didn't need to give the billionaire anything but a smile and a nod. I felt compelled to give what I had with me to the person living on the street because, well, in walking outside I've come to see him as an equal in the process of living, albeit one who needs a bit more help. There but for the grace of God go I.  I purposely bring along cash now when I'm out photographing just in case. But a donation of time and money is not just for someone down on their luck, it's also for me so I can understand better that we're all, in some way, connected. And there is always hope.

If more people in the comfortable middle class got up off the couch, out of their cars, and walked through the streets of their cities and met the people who live all around them and saw life as a breeze flowing in and around the individuals who surround us their understanding and compassion might grow. Their jealousy of people who have more might recede. Their compassion for those who have less might surge. And, in general, they might feel more comfortable about real life. Their real life. Instead of the lives of virtual strangers and the politics they get fed through their ever present screens.

Sadness, jealousy, rancor and division seem to be addictions. Just as strong and as destructive as alcohol or drugs. Maybe street photography is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things but every positive effort is somehow rewarding. Even if it's just an excuse to get outside your bubble and experience more of real life. With real people. And real scenes. Every smile and nod from a stranger is a connection...

Cameras can be more than toys or tools. They can be magic carpets that give us some insight to experience more. To see more deeply and intently. And to incorporate what we see as learning for ourselves. Just a thought.