Can there actually be more?

No name dropping here, But Max’s was were it all took place, and “ALL” is what you may see, or feel that’s happening in your world. At this juncture MAX’S was a big part of ALL in my world. Simple desires; a good steak, baked potato with sour cream, a wedge of lettuce with three dressing on the table and lets not forget, a loaf of bread, tub of butter and a good bottle of wine; ALL AT AN AFFORDABLE price. My mouths waters just thinking about it, yeah, even now a mere fifty years later.

My friends arrive and we are ushered upstairs to a choice booth. Our booth is along side of the HUGE WINDOW which overlooks Park Avenue South. As we sit down I begin using my camera to record the happennings below. The crowd is spewling out onto the street, traffic is stoppping in both directions, but from my vantage point, I am at a great disadvantage. I try but I can’t make out whos coming or going, but the people below are revelling in the appearance of them. I keep clicking off silly shots in hope of capturing a face. “Look it’s, it’s, is it???” I’ll never know because then I should have been focusing instead of name dropping.

While these moments will come and go often when your holding you camera and maybe not. Try to remember when looking for that elusive shot, maybe even a keeper or two, try remembering to look close around you as well. Your shot isn’t always far off in the distance as a majestic mountain range or field of sunflowers. Your art may be right there at the kitchen table or the resturant’s window. This is that moment as best as I can recall. In the windows reflection the lights from the sign and my friends faces are meshed into one clickable image: AND CLICK. Yes that I think I got her and that was just one shot out of two rolls of Kodak Panatomic X. One thing for sure is that when you stop thinking every image is a keeper, you’ll see the KEEPER. And ONE is like GOLD.

Through my life there will be moments when that click is indeliby written in my minds eye and heart. Here, Henri Cartier-Bresson eplains it better than I can. But I recongize these instants not as much when I’m clicking away (and lets not loose sight of what wer’e talking about, its FILM, your a lot more cautious when there is only 36 shots) but, when I am in the developing stage of my work. Regardless of it being in a tray or in an photo editor, if I captured what I felt then, then I know my eye, heart and camera were is sync with the world about me. And for that instant I have managed to save for eternity a feeling that is displaying a feeling, really very powerful. You can read a better explanation here: See, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers by Henri Cartier-Bresson “Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject, accept again; and before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together. There is also a period when his brain “forgets,” and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts. But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever.” 
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

I guess I went off topic a bit. I’d admit as I can best recall during this era in my life I would stumble upon so many new experiences that often I’d ask, How did I ever get here or, I’d mumble, where am I, what am I doing here? Some filled with pleasures other still scare me in thinking about them. But, throught the many starts and stops along my path, my Nikon stood by me and always brought me comfort, especially during the lonely times.

Lonely times?