The Mission is still my favorite neighborhood in SF. Noe Valley is where the hipsters have gone, but the mission still has some grit and dirt. Some non-white non-tech people, people not like me. Bars you could get stabbed in, cash only. Several of the world’s best burrito joints. Yeah, what’s not to like?.
Yes, I’m alive. The blog is not yet dead, even though I see many other bloggers hanging up their keyboards. I could use a different, slicker, easier platform. I could just stick all my photos up on flicker. But then where would I ramble on aimlessly? Anyway, here are the first five photos out of my quick collection. They’re not related, except they were shot in this order, within a couple days of each other.
Which isn’t where I remember it, the last time I was here. Seems it’s gone about 30 yards further in. The weather while we were there was grey and cold and rainy, but not enough. It should have snowed the whole time. Stupid Climate Change.
In february, Soph’s company had their annual offsite in Tahoe. The whole company and their families go for a weekend of fun. There’s skiing, snowboarding, spas, food, drinking, the whole bit. So, on friday, the weekend of, we all got on a big bus loaded down with a lot of booze and a lot of nerds, and off we went. If you’ve been on this kind of bus trip (and who hasn’t?), you know they’re always chronically late, beset by delays, and can be fairly miserable. This was at least well-organized, and well stocked with booze. We set off at the appointed time for what should have been a four hour drive. We immediately hit traffic on the Bay Bridge. Fairly smooth sailing from there to Sacramento or so, with just a case of motion sickness. Then, we started getting into the mountains and the traffic started getting worse. Since it was a bus full of nerds, we all had google maps out the whole way and knew the delay was coming. We drank whiskey and waited, and then, past one checkpoint, we tried to get some guys who were putting on chains for $20 to put them on the bus, and nobody would. So, some of the passengers ended up helping the driver get the chains on to get past the second checkpoint. This all added about 2 hours, plus the stop-and-go traffic the whole time. We were supposed to be there by dinner time; it ended up being around 9:30. We were on the bus to Tahoe for something like 7 hours. We ran out of whiskey, beer and toilet paper (not in that order). We ran out of snackfood. The bus didn’t break down, though, and we made it over the pass. Finally. And the hotel was gorgeous.
Every day. Take the camera out, take some pictures. Nobody pays me. There’s no gallery. There’s just a blog. A blog with typos. and poor grammar. Written whenever I’m exhausted, published when I’m tired of re-writing my thoughts. Some days I’m tired. Some days I only take one or two pictures. Others, I shoot hundreds. The odds of getting a good picture are only slightyly improved on the days with hundreds. It’s more about putting in the work. If I take the time to look carefully, see what’s in front of the camera, that matters more than the frames exposed. I look, I get closer to whatever it was I wanted to shoot. Put the files away on a hard drive for a month, two, to fogret the feeling of tripping the shutter. Editing is hard; editing with emotion is a lot harder. When I look, finally, I’m often surprised by how good the photos are; I’m one of those people who procrastinates because I think I’ll be dissapointed. These photos are from days like that. Where I don’t have project or a direction, but I’m moving in the direction if my intuition. Putting in the work. Skill not talent, someting you have to do to keep it up. Practice pushing the button, keep doing it until I can’t any more.
Copyright © 2008-Forever, Matt Mills.
