Parislog 88
December 27, 2006

The weather has really changed a lot lately. It has become quite cold hitting 0º C or 32º F sometimes even during the day. The blue skies have disappeared into a grey/white sky that sometimes doesn’t pass somber gray. It is easy to stay shut inside and not put a single foot outside. And I am often shut inside just my room so that I can have heat and yet not be heating the whole house. I keep hearing how expensive the electric wall heaters are. This is not a comfortable thing for me but I am surviving it. I feel like my world got really small.
I do force myself to go out and with the holiday eating season adding onto my waistline, I am now making myself go out for minimum 1 hour walks. Of course, I take my camera with me everywhere I go.
I used to just keep it in my purse and whip it out when I found something that I wanted to photograph but them I kept missing shots. I couldn’t get it out and set up fast enough for some of those fleeting moments so then I began to carry it around my neck all the time at the risk of looking like a tourist everywhere I went. Today, I was walking along and had left it in my bag thinking that I was just on my way to somewhere and not thinking about shooting and along comes a guy carrying a flower shaped chair on his head. I want this shot. I fumble for the camera. I get it out and rip of a shot only to find that the settings were not prepped for fast street shots and all I got was blur. Bu the time I had it all sorted out, all I got was this long distance back shot. I cropped the shot so that you could see what I was trying to get but it will never be printable as this is a tiny portion of the original.
I must tell you that I found a tripod recently. I am so happy. There is something online called freecycle where you can tell people in your neighborhood what you have to give away instead of filling up landfills. I have used it to hand over a few items. I decided one day to ask for a tripod, to give it a shot and see if anyone might just have one. Lo and behold a wonderful couple, which were in the middle of moving, saw my ad and sent me a reply. It makes such a difference in the clarity of my photos and I have been having quite a good time using it to go out and do twilight and night photography. This shot of a light for the metro entrance was taken when it was almost complete night using the tripod. Cool huh?