Still playing around with yesterday's images from the SL and the Zeiss 28mm Biogon. I wonder what they look like in black and white. Oops. Excuse me! I wonder what they look like in monochrome.

 

Apropos of nothing, I was once a newspaper delivery boy. I was reminded of that this morning when B and I were out for our walk through the hills in our neighborhood. It was during my fresh man year of high school. I delivered the San Antonio Express News and the New York Times to some of the homes in my community. Almost everyone took the local paper back then. About a quarter also took the Times.

It was not my favorite job, looking back. I had to get up well before sunrise, gather up the papers that were dropped off via a big, white truck, roll them and bind them with string or twine to keep them from coming apart and blowing away, then stuff them into the wire baskets on my bicycle and peddle off into the darkness to get them to the subscribers in time to read over breakfast. It was a neighborhood of assorted professionals and business owners and they mostly seemed to be early risers. I'd catch hell if the papers weren't on the driveways or on the front porches by the time the sun came up. Older guys in ties needed their fix of daily news...

Sometimes I would sleep through my alarm clock and my father (one of the early risers) would gently shake me awake and make sure I got up. A couple of times I came down with a cold or the flu and I remember my dad very professionally assessing my condition and telling me to go back to sleep. Before heading in to work at the hospital those mornings he went out with my paper address list, found the papers, bound them and delivered them. In his suit and tie. Never complained. 

The early mornings I dreaded most were the ones during which it was raining, sleeting, snowing or otherwise wet. If we had rain, or strongly suspected there would be rain, I would have to roll the papers up and then insert each newspaper into a waterproof, plastic sleeve. If there was a lot of news on a day like that, or a lot of advertising circulars, getting the rolled papers into the sleeves took a lot of time and ingenuity. It was an "art" I never truly mastered.

There was something odd about collecting the money from people at the end of each month. I'd have a ledger from the newspaper that laid out how much each house owed for their papers. The best time to catch everyone at home was the dinner hour since so few people routinely went out to eat back then. Most people expected to see me and had an envelope with cash in it next to the front door so they could hand it to me when I rang the door bell. Some people played hard to get and inadvertently taught me the time value of money...  The best customers were friends and co-workers of my father. They routinely tipped me more than the cost of their bills. And they were kind and supportive.

My job throwing papers onto driveways lasted from the end of 8th grade, through the long Summer, and up to the day I tried out for the high school swim team. I made the cut and had to abandon my early "career" in "journalism" because in order to be on the swim team I had to make it to both of the daily practices. The first practice started at 5:30 a.m. A direct conflict to early newspaper delivery...

My father suggested I write a "thank you" note to each of my customers explaining my schedule change and giving them the telephone number to call if they didn't get their paper on time. I took his advice and learned a bit about the value of good customer relations when I subsequently dated some of the former customers' daughters, or applied for Summer jobs in the following years at some of their companies. 

The most valuable lessons I learned doing the newspaper delivery gig were: You get a lot more done if you get up early. Making your own money is fun and empowering. Being organized and disciplined smooths out some of the inevitable bumps in life and makes the day-to-day work easier. And, finally, it's really wonderful to know my dad always had my back. And he did for many decades afterwards. I tried to return the favor whenever I could.

My next Summer job was lifeguarding. That was a lot more fun.

I went to the Pecan Street Festival today. I took a camera and two lenses. I shot three hundred+ photos. I post processed them right afterwards. I put up a huge gallery right here. I think I've figured out "Street Photography."

 

Fellow photographer roaming the festival with a Nikon Z9 over one shoulder and a Nikon film camera over the other. Fist bumping happened. Sweet guy. 

The Pecan Street Festival is pretty lame but it still draws a crowd. Lots and lots of vendor booths selling everything from jewelry to grape free "flower wines" to timeshare vacation packages. And lots of art. And food that isn't very good for you. And beer. And more beer. 

I drove down and parked a mile away from the five or six blocks that have been closed off for the event (continues on Sunday). I needed the walk. Nice to get out of the office, out of the pool and to wander carefree with a small package of gear. 

I took a Leica SL camera. I guess I have to admit that the older SLs are my absolute favorites at this point. I pick them up first and put them down last. I was going to go with just the 58mm Voigtlander lens but at the last moment I put the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon ZM in a very small sling bag. The slim sling bag I bought as a hedge against rain on my visit to the Blanton Museum of Art on Thursday. The sling bag held the extra lens, two additional batteries for the SL (not needed), my phone and a lens cleaning cloth (also not needed). 

I split my hour or so of shooting between the two lenses. I started with the 58mm and transitioned to the wide angle about half way through. Just wandering through the crowds stopping to snap a frame whenever the spirit moved me. When I felt hungry and thirsty I looked around at the culinary offerings and determined that I'd be much better off raiding the pantry at home. When I left the house there was a new triple creme brie, a demi baguette fresh from the bakery and a nice bottle of Bordeaux Superior lingering on the butcher block table in the kitchen. I thought some variation/combination of those ingredients might refresh me. 

But first I sat down at the computer, edited down the take to about 70 images, went through to crop and tweak them and then edited down the stack to what you see here. Took about as long to do the post production work as it did to shoot the images in the first place. 

I have to say that the endless depth of field of a 28mm lens, stopped down to f11 and used with auto-ISO is an infinitely faster way to shoot in the street and get stuff that's nearly always in focus. That's nice. The 58, shooting wide open, needs care and practice if you are going to nail stuff. My "keeper" rate for the 58mm was pretty dang low today. Much, much higher for the 28.  Which leads me to suspect that the legion of street photographers don't really "LIKE" the 28mm focal length no matter how vociferously they laud that focal length, they are just too afraid of failure to shoot with a manual focusing, fast 50+ mm lens; even if it's secretly what we ALL think we should be shooting with ALL the time. In this regard I think the 28mm is a cowardly choice.

Out of all the images I took today only one person objected to having a picture made. It was the mom of a toddler in a stroller who had his face painted like Spiderman. The mom didn't want her child's photo on the internet. I totally agreed with her and promised I wouldn't put it there/here. Sorry. Of course it was the best shot of the day.

Here's some OT.

I heard on a secret information sharing site just for bloggers that the latest ploy for goosing up readership of photography  blogs is to go completely off topic and discuss anything at all about cars. Not cameras. Just cars. So, not wanting to be left behind, here goes. I buy cars when I need them. I buy them new. If inflation raises the price of new cars I'm pretty sure that the yearly increases in my fee income compensates for the higher prices and renders the idea that cars are getting more expensive mostly moot. Things only seem more expensive if you are not raising your prices to match market reality. I'm driving a 2021 Subaru Forester. It has 15,000 miles on the odometer. I wrote a check from my business account to the dealer to purchase the car. I don't do car payments. My father (wise and kind) once told me that if you had to pay over time for something that means you really can't afford it. The only exception he made was for the purchase of houses. (He drove Honda Accords even though he could easily afford to purchase any car on the market).

All current cars seem pretty good. I never really exceed the maximum Texas speed limit of 75 mph so faster cars or cars with bigger engines are meaningless to me. My CPA handles the math for depreciation and the like. A car is like a utility (gas, electric, water). If you live and work in Texas you more than likely need one. You can get a very good and reliable car for about $30K, brand new. When my current vehicle feels "old" I'll buy another one. After a day or two of research. I've owned a number of different cars. The most costly to buy, service and "enjoy" was a BMW 540i. Went from a "magic carriage" to a "costly piece of shit" as soon as the 48K mile warranty expired. Not much fun but a quick "good riddance" and off I went to buy something reliable. That time it was a quick transition to a new Honda. The cars most people consider fun or desirable I think of as poor bargains. I rarely hear complaints about reliability from Toyota Corolla owners. I hear complaints endlessly from Range Rover owners and BMW owners. I also hear that it's painful to point a loaded handgun at your foot and pull the trigger. And that sums up everything I need to know about cars.