Unfocus to Focus
"You look like an old school photographer with that camera," said a tired but emotive voice behind me.
"oh! yes, this is an old camera. From the 80s," I quickly replied, tilting my camera on an axis for her to see. She crossed the street with me. For eight o'clock in the morning she seemed already beat and trodden. "I took a course in college. I did not know I would love it but sadly it was too expensive for me to pick it up as a hobby," she recalled lamentingly. "Yes, it can be expensive, especially if you shoot with analog film."
We walked north for three blocks talking about the work of my favorite photographer.
"And so, Vivian Maier was this whole person outside of her job as a nanny. I was looking at her old contact sheets and she had gone to Egypt, India, photographer the places, but more so the people. She was interested in people," I ecstatically continued.
"Do you think I can find some of her pictures at the library?" she inquired.
"Of course! They have most of her work," I responded while coming to a stop. I had to go left and she had to go straight but before parting ways I turned to her and said, "It was nice talking to you. What was your name again?"
I walked some blocks recalling my conversation with her until I came across a strange occurrence. Someone had left a Cinnamon roll stacked sloppily on top of a...fire hydrant? No. Electrical safety thing? No, that's not it. It's a tube that comes up to probably about four feet and has two sealed entry ways that face outward. I had no idea what it was that this Cinnamon roll was on top of, but I knew one thing: I love cinnamon rolls.
I swung my camera in front of me, did my best to remember the basics of the exposure triangle and concluded to photographer this strange juxtaposition at an aperture of 4 and a shutter speed of 125. The waist-level viewfinder popped open with the sound of tiny blades slicing into each other, I focused, pulled out the metal dark slide from the film back, focused one more time, unfocused it, checked the corner of my viewfinder, then the other one, all the way around, and then I focused again while unfocusing to focus again, and then it was time to release the shutter.
Winding the winder to the next exposure, I continued my journey to the cafe where I would meet a friend.