On the edge

Just as a pre-cursor here, and because I'm thinking about it right now. Diet Sunkist with Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, kinda tasty. I'm going to have to work on it, I don't have the ratios quite right yet. I can get it to start with a good Dr. Pepper flavor with a hint of orange then have it finish with a nice strong Sunkist kick. But I'm not quite there, yet. The ratio is something like 10:1 Dr. Pepper to Sunkist too, it may go even higher by the time I've figured it out. I've never had a mixing ratio that high before. Anyhow.... (and yeah, I need something productive to do with my life.)

One of the skills, thought patterns, I've been working on improving is spending less time working the event, and more time working the edges of the event. The center of an event often has a lot going on, but it's predictable, it's easy. The edges, where the people are there, but aren't necessarily, are so often more. They speak more to what people are, and less to what they want to project to be. They tend may be more into the event than those that are there to appear to be in the event.

Cases in point. The man dancing. I can always groove with a guy who will dance to the music, unself-consciously. The man sitting by the wall, maybe homeless, maybe not, I don't know, was way into the music. He would occasionally shoot dirty looks at the talking couple, not in a mean way, but just in a way that you knew he was appreciating the music. He had a great little wry happy smile, that I wish I could've got just right, but never did (well I may shoot for publication, sometimes it's better to remember than to capture.) He was also very kind, anyone who wanted the seat in front of him he generously extended his hand to say "you are welcome to sit here" even when it was going to block his view. The band was good, don't get me wrong, but so much less interesting to watch than the people watching. (It's like the zoo, animals, cute, fun. People? Now that's just fascinating, and a reason to go. Whacky species them homo-sapiens.)

And yeah, I've been going and shooting the Cultural Center during their lunch time jazz performances, because really, if you could go listen to a 45-minute jazz concert and call it work, legitimately, wouldn't you? My job may not pay much, so hell, I might as well be happy. And I am.


Now, the one thing I would change, of my three primary work cameras, all three have something busted on them. Buttons not working is the top problem. I was really enjoying when I could only trust the auto-focus on one of the cameras, and that camera can only auto-focus in the middle of the frame. I don't own a single camera with a totally working auto-focus mechanism. Alas, one of the questionable focusing cameras went and had the whole shutter mechanism break, so that's off to Nikon tomorrow. The Canon with the sticky focus button I can do on the fly fixes for, but it's annoying as all get out. It's tough to manually focus well when you can't even see what's in the viewfinder. (I like dark places. It probably goes along with, I like challenges.) The auto-focus doesn't do well in those situations either, but if I can get it to catch I know I'm in the ballpark. Alas I can't go a week without that camera, it earns me too much money, and I'd really rather not drop the cash to buy a replacement, for a week. Few more months, the new version will be out, and I'll buy one of those. Life is funny.