Day 26: Urban Portraits // Invitation to Be My Guest

Stealth photos in the photo class. I didn't realize the guy was picking his nose...

Today I had two excellent chances to meet people. And I kind of did. But the project is definitely trending towards a mellow finale.

This afternoon, I returned to the 826 Valencia world and helped out with a class of seventh graders embarking on a quest to become journalists. In practice, this meant that I helped one adorable little guy named Jihad read a news article. I met people, but not really. Besides, I'd already had two 826 Valencia days on the blog already.

So I saved the official meeting for first night of the photography class I signed up for through UC Berkeley's student art studio. It's called "Urban Portraits," so I decided to take my first one while sitting on the floor of the over-crowded classroom towards the end of an overly complex discussion of exposure compensation. Not too shabby for a stealth point-and-shoot if I do say so myself.

I got to class late so had no time to meet anyone then, and there was not a lot of sticking around after class, either. Including by me. I just didn't have it in me. I did have a nice (short) conversation with the guy in the yellow shirt as our bikes were parked next to each other. He has a British accent. He doesn't own a camera, yet. I will be seeing him more. I neither learned his name nor told him about Encantada. 

But given that I now have 6 weeks of urban photo assignments, I have a feeling that even after the project ends in four days (praise be!) I will have encounters to report on.

I think the most stimulating part of tonight's class for me was thinking about documentary art outside the context of journalism. No one was talking about going crazy with Photoshop or anything, but we did discuss the fallacy of thinking photographs capture some sort of objective truth. Photographers chose their subjects, lighting, composition, etc, and they can manipulate those. They can also chose which photos to put next to each other to create a message. I kept translating these ideas into thoughts about writing. Except in photography I feel more free. It's harder to accidently make stuff up.

We also talked about photography being inherently exploitative, as is journalism, as is an Encantada blog. The teacher showed us some of his own work in which he tried to counter that a little by including photos taken by the subject of his portraits. In that same spirit, I hereby invite any of the people who I've written about thus far (I know at least some of you are reading along) to guest post about anything you want. I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone takes me up on the offer. I mean it though.

So once again I declare today a success even though I didn't abide by the letter of my own rules.

They say it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. I think getting out and being willing to talk to people has crossed that line for me. I have faith in the exciting world outside my door if ever I decide to go seek it. And I will.