Blog Meet Santa Monica – 1

Posted on September 22, 2002 in Blog Meets Photos Reflections

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I’ve never been terrific at photographing people. I’m much more comfortable doing what some call in photo cant “artifacts”. There were many handsome heads at the blog meet in shapes and colors that made me want to grab a few people and keep them to myself for a few hours taking pictures. (If you found me starting at you a lot or not at all, it was probably because I liked your face.) I had to settle, however, for whatever landscapes the group led me into.

I’ll get the people photos out of the way first because that is what certain of my readers are hungering for. Then it will be time for a long think. I guess I can get better at photographing people. I just have to develop the comfort I have with shadows on the ground, found objects, waves, and scenery.

One picture makes me feel uncomfortable: the one of Lynn crammed into the little car at the entrance to the mall. In some ways, it’s the best picture of the day. I love the expression on her face. But I ache because only an hour before we’d had this fight out by the carousel. It was over the cel phone. As we were getting out of the truck, she asked me if she should “bring stuff” with us. Lynn says that she was holding the cel phone up as she asked me. I guess my head was turned when I muttered something she took to be an answer. We got out of the truck, marched down to the pier, and, after trying to find the meeting place, first on the carnival platform and then out at the end of the pier, she asked a cotton candy maker where it was. I could see no crowd. We asked a few people if they were here for the blog gathering. They gave us the look they reserved for people who babble incoherently. I noticed a slight blonde leaning against the building. Looking back, I think this might have been the missing Eve. I don’t know why I didn’t ask her. Perhaps because when the thought occured to me, my anger had started to show.

My PDA said that the time was 14:13. “It’s OK,” I said. “Did you bring the cel phone?”

“No,” she whined. “When I asked you if I should bring it, you said ‘No'”.

I imagined that I was starting to look ugly. I stormed back to the parking structure. We were on the top level. I made Lynn go get the cel phone from the truck after we got out of the elevator. All the way there, I had nagged her: “You know me,” I kvetched. “You’ve lived with me for sixteen years. You ask me these things when my mind is somewhere else. Why do you keep doing that?”

I called kd and learned that everyone else was stuck in traffic. I calmed a bit, though I continued to strive to impress on Lynn the importance of making these decisions for herself and not relying on me. “I’m a flake,” I whimpered.

When we reached the crowd waiting at the end of the bridge, I’d calmed down. But after I looked at the picture of Lynn all cramped inside the toy truck, I recalled my verbal oppression of her. The picture didn’t give me joy. It felt like an emblem of a marriage in which I was the less attractive of the two partners.