Say-So

On my recent trip up to Vancouver, I have not left the apartment I stayed in for three days in a row. The grey sky obscured the world, blanketed and isolated me. Time halted, as the sun stopped marking the times of the day. My dog turned into a cat. He ate canned tuna and slept all day. The twilight was all encompassing and everlasting.

On any other visit, 3 days at a time over long weekends, I have no misgivings about efficient use of my time. I head out to shoot. I want to score photos to label otherwise than “San Francisco” and tilt the balance away from the overbearingly heavy font on my photoblog. The shooting experience varies from city to city. Having returned to photograph in the same locations multiple times, I am beginning to notice a consistency in the type of photographs I am inclined to take at each place. I recognize a few factors. First being how easy is it to maneuver and physically navigate the streets. Last is my own personal and emotional response to that location. Somewhere in the middle, caught in between the two extremes are my subjects, the locals who live and work, their culture, manners and their degree of expressivity.

Vancouver is difficult differently from Buenos Aires. The streets of Buenos Aires are narrow and crowded or wide and very crowded. The pace of traffic both human and motorized is overwhelming. I find myself wearing a constant look of bewilderment as if a gust of wind generated by the heaving multitudes snatched my hat and left me with one hand mid air too late to catch it. On the streets of Buenos Aires I tend to front assault. Since there is no time or room to move around my subjects, I spot a scene some distance away, keep walking towards it while watching it approach. I wait for it to walk into my frame at a given focal length. In one movement, I jerk, focus and shoot, putting the camera away as my subjects and I brush shoulders in passing. I often catch the “deer in the headlight” look on people’s faces which is interesting in itself but rewarding and entertaining for only so long.

While Buenos Aires incapacitates with visual excess, Vancouver has me look harder for new ways to frame a shot. In a city which separates walk-ways from bicycle-lanes, where every person passing offers a helping hand to a stranded cyclist, where school boys bum free rides on city busses by asking the driver for permission, in the ruling territory of “thank you and please” the public is very reserved and proper. On Robson street shoppers walk, at cafes patrons sip and sit, at the beach families and friends lay and relax. Whatever it is the residents engage in, it is unhurried, measured and low key. On grand avenues and at green city squares I lurk behind bus stops and by cafe’s vitrines, to include reflections, shadows or other lines in hopes of making mundane city inaction into a scene of interest.

Warsaw is paralyzing. I walk for days with the camera hang over my shoulder. I become a teenager who suddenly sprouted in height and towers over her peers. I am self conscious about my camera. It betrays me as polonus and not a Pole. In a state of profound paranoia my subjects have turned the tables around and are watching me, watch them. When I finally beat some sense into my head and press the shutter, I invariably get in trouble. I am bereft of the impunity that comes with looking like a foreigner and I understand only too well the mumbled insults that follow. “Very tall and naked, noticed by everyone in Warsaw” is a hard place to be while attempting street photography in which 90% of success is determined by confidence with a minor mix of arrogance. The remaining percentile of skill sets requires the foot work of a tennis player and hyper awareness of a seasoned cabbie. “Owning the street” is an elusive state of mind, it is seeing without being seen. It is sensing the curb with your feet and being aware of the street’s traffic without looking. It is falling in step with the subject for that one click of the shutter.

On my return to San Francisco, I was greeted by full blown summer, interrupted since then by the city’s typical fog spells and coastal winds, yet bright California sunshine nevertheless. Traveling between 3 cities in a matter of 15 days accentuates the differences and individual character of each one. It appears that only now, 6 years into my stay, I’ve become able to recognize the typical San Francisco flavor. The bright full spectrum light intensifies the colors in my photos and makes street photography such thrill, precisely here. The block parties and uninterrupted string of outdoor events provide interest and focus to my shooting. The young and the young at heart who indulge in pursuits of happiness on their days off in free and uninhibited manner - are a treat to a street photographer hoping to get that one shot that is better than anything else she has taken to date. As my photoblog is approaching its 1000th post, unable, uninspired and unmotivated to head out, I reflected on my personal photographic experience, its joys and challenges and the unstoppable compulsion to keep shooting, during the 3 gloomy days under the grey Vancouver sky.