Rockridge BART

I threw items willynilly into a big bag & tore out of the house afraid of missing BART. One of the things I grabbed was my camera, because we were going out for Mom’s birthday. When I flung myself onto the platform I realized that 1) I had a whole 3 minutes before my train, & 2) I could get a photo session in!

I walked down the platform toward my preferred end where you get a nice view of the city, thinking maybe I’d get someone to take my picture with that view in the background. However, when I approached my photographer we were facing the wrong directions for that & I realized that if I walked around to have the view in back of me, it would force her to turn around & away from her bag that was between her feet, & furthermore the other people sharing her circular bench (is it still a bench if it’s a circle?) would be in the way.

I’m not sure why she decided she had to stand up to take the picture; my guess is for a more flattering angle since I was standing. She expressed a mild lack of confidence, I explained how to press the button halfway down first & then all the way down, & then I watched her kind of struggle with it a little bit. She kept moving the camera around within a fairly small range quite near her face (bearing out my theory about camera-eye proximity correlating with age) & neither of us seemed sure that she was even taking any pictures. She asked me to repeat the thing about halfway & then all the way. Finally she seemed to get the hang of it & asked me to check to make sure that she actually got a picture. I thanked her, she complimented my coat, & I thanked her again for that. Yes I am a lucky duck to get hooked up with this coat!

I know, I said this wasn’t a fashion blog, & truly I gave so little thought to what I was wearing as I ran out of the house, it’s completely ironic to then be documented in such fancy togs.

About the tags

I decided to tag each photo with rough demographics, based purely on my impression of my photographers’ race, gender & age. Age is a really hard one so I just have “younger” for anyone who seems younger than me & “older” for anyone who seems older than me. So far I have yet to ask anyone who feels like “my age” but whenever I do, that’s what I’ll put for them. Visual/social perception of race & gender are of course tricky things, & I’m sure I’ll guess wrong especially on race. But it’s already interesting to see that I am totally predictable: in my world it’s the white women who always get asked to do small favors like this. I haven’t really decided whether to try to buck that or not. I sort of think that if I just keep picking the “best” candidate every time, eventually the tag cloud will scream white female in giant letters.

Of course, now that I’ve said that, I might not want to ask any more white women.

Among the vinyl

I like to tag along when Donna gets her hair cut. I’ve always enjoyed watching haircuts—but hair washing, not so much. So I took a few minutes to skip up the block to Amoeba for the latest from Carolina Chocolate Drops.

With this photographer I noticed how she held the camera low in front of her. Is there any correlation between age & default height for holding cameras? I speculate that older folks, from years of holding film cameras up to their eyeballs, would probably hold a digital camera higher, out of habit. I think when shooting standing people, I hold the camera sort of about shoulder height, compared to this woman’s mid-lower chest height. She was probably in her early 30s.