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Tonight I had my first Digital Photo II Class at RayKo, the studio where I’m currently interning. RayKo offers a range of classes that are open to the public, anything from darkroom courses to shooting and processing iPhone photos. Through my internship this summer I’m lucky enough to take three of their classes free of charge (the classes are hundreds of dollars each, so it’s an amazing deal). In addition to the Digital Photo II, I’m taking a studio lighting class in mid-August and a digital printing course to learn how to actually print my stuff. Which would be nice. I’m also helping an instructor with a class on Saturday, which might offer more information.

For the longest time I’ve been shooting just to shoot without thinking about any of the logistics of it. I wouldn’t give a second thought to dumping my digital images on my computer and butchering them in Photoshop without considering color depth, histograms, and clipping (among other things). I feel like a fool for messing with JPG’s so much when I could have pushed an image’s quality to great heights with RAW. Now I know, and I’m learning! Learning feels so nice.

My first assignment for the class is to shoot a self-portrait (something I’ve always loved the challenge of) and a portrait. Sounds simple enough, but it’s terrifying. I’m going to try not to think of it too much—when it comes naturally I find, it’s not as painful.

As far as photo goes, I really feel that things are going to pick up from here…

I KNEW I’D GONE THERE FOR A REASON. Of all the places I could have made my evening, there was a directional force that had drawn me to that particular corner. Be it timing or luck, swift happenstance, or perfect chance—it happened. They walked in bone-tired and swung their lives three feet away, enough for me to make room to make them friends. Vindication.

Now life feels, that it’s all happening with reason.

ON MONTGOMERY, tw0-thirty a.m.
I’m staring straight, at the back of a bald man’s head as he argues with the bus driver about her income, wondering what he looked like in high school. The camera flashes. I look down at my high heels and think of all the events that led me here, to and with strangers. We exit as the driver howls, I’ll show you my W-2’s! You’ll see what I make! and suddenly

There, All-Star Café, dead night. It was nothing but dirt and heathens, bar scum. We enter and just as, two musicians catch our eye. They’d played at Powell and Market and all over underground to make it day by day, they’d give girls “the look” to make a dollar, but they really didn’t care. I didn’t care, they weren’t all attractive and such, we scurried on. Linked arm in arm, dispensing the night’s highlights and musings, the never-again’s—and I agreed, it would never happen again.

Such as the night would move on, I could never fixate. It was a strong drink and a strong drink, a flashback to strolling up the street in heels, privileged white female, rough part of town, and young men spitting across the sidewalk just before my passing. Friday, Friday and it wasn’t what anyone wanted so I

Kept on. Then look on at 10 a.m., through disaster, chin up and walk. Saturday morning with all in their jeans and there was the burst of shame, last night’s everything, walk like a lady. And I did, and stares, and a black man in a wheelchair on the sidewalk saying, now that’s a woman! That’s a woman! But she wasn’t. She was

Not going to pretend that’s what I do, because I don’t. And on Montgomery, through the arguing and laughter, the only woman not wearing rouge lipstick and speaking Spanish, whose legs were coated in black tights, the only woman who was scared—that was me.

EVEN WHEN ALL IS IN YOUR FAVOR, left and right are justified, skies are blue, food tastes unquestionably delicious, the roof over your head contains no leaks, fibers on your back are clean and soft, locale is distant, vast, unforgettable, and ventures so wholesome as to make you feel formiddable…

Is it what you really want?

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Coastal San Francisco
07.03.10

Today I trekked through Chinatown on my way home from work. I was on a mission: Find snails for a coworker. With the multitude of live creatures present in any given shop, I figured it should be no problem.

I scoured the live animal stores, grazing past decapitated fish bodies of every size and shape, their heads tossed haphazardly on adjacent tables. Live fish gasped for breath in shallow bins as their eyes bulged in desperation. There were frogs larger than my face, crabs enough to feed five, turtles bigger than basketballs waiting to meet their fate. Examining the floor inch to inch, I discovered slime and seafood galore—but no snails.

Then walking down Stockton empty-handed, I pulled the headphones from my ears and tucked away the music. I listened, to the chatter of Chinese and the scurrying to gather the night’s dinner, bargaining for greens and seeds and berries. I saw shop owners tucked behind their cash registers, deep in a forest of cheap goods, waiting. The coalesce of the chaos, the calm, buses passing in transport, people waiting to go where they needed to get. I watched. All I wanted was a snail.

History repeats itself…

TODAY WAS SAN FRANCISCO’S annual Gay Pride Parade, where scores of people spanned Market Street to see the LGBT community in rare form. People parading in cars, costumes, dykes on bikes, music, flags and rainbows. It truly was quite the experience…something everyone should attend at some point. Just to see, and to better understand.

I’ve quite a few photos that I’ll post over the next few days, but for now this will have to suffice:

Be well.

xo
j

How groovy is she, really?

I am slowly coming to grips with the nature of my plans. They’ve not occurred as I practiced for months ahead, they’re not all going as they should, I’m attempting to unearth new ways to feel that I’ve won.

But it’s not all bad news. I have what I have, I’m thankful, I know there’s good all around me to compensate for the aims I’ve missed.

Some day I’m going to find something to be enormously proud of.