Anyone following my posts for awhile know that I went to Pennsylvania this summer for a few weeks to do night photos in locations from my past. Since I returned to NC, where I now live, something shifted in my consciousness, sort of curtailing my obsessive shooting style, leaving me with more time on my hands, fewer images in my computer....not that I don't agree with the need to cut back the time behind a camera lens and get a life, but I found it kinda strange that about a month ago, I seemed called from within to San Francisco...another location that I lived for 6 years, back awhile ago.
My reason for making the trip was actually for another reason: to do a particular initiation with a spiritual master from India, on the weekend, up on a mountain top in Laytonville, 3+ miles north of SF. Figuring I was already all the way out there, I planned to stay with friends in the city for the following week.
Although the photographs I've chosen to show don't all have specific connections to the past experiences of living there, the trip did take me back into my past again. Specifically, the apple orchard...I stopped in Sebastopol to visit friends on the way back down to the city, and got lost....pulled into that orchard to call for directions again and spent time shooting photos. The next day, as I was leaving he said, "By the way, that orchard you went into was the same one we all picked apples in for the apple juice we bottled and sold at the farmers market"....being location and directionally challanged, plus many years later on top of that, it was quite a shock to have been deposited squarely into my past, with camera in tow. A few days later, standing infront of an apartment I lived in on Potrero hill, on a whim I knocked on the door, only to have the tenant open the door and invite me in to look around when I told her about visiting previous homes I've lived in. I shot a few frames inside, however it was daytime, and it doesn't count for my night series.
So, another part of my past came forward for scrutiny and enjoyment. I'm not sure what any of this means, if anything, but it was fun hanging out there, exploring places photographically I knew from before and others that were new.
*"Shmootz." Those of you who haven't spent time in NY or aren't Jewish, might not be familiar with this wonderful sounding Yiddish word that translates as "dirt" in a wider context. It isn't dirt, like ground from the earth (unless it's all over your face or clothing, as in "What's that shmootz all over your clothes?" kind of way...it's messy or dirty stuff that shouldn't be where it doesn't belong.
Like the greasy fingerprint a small child got on my lens when I wasn't looking!
I was in LA last week for a family event which is where the shmootz got applied. Later, driving through the West Hollywood area, I did a few "drive-by shootings" ...shooting while in the car, sometimes at a stop; sometimes while still moving along. Generally in LA that means not moving too fast because the traffic is abominable, which is how this series began when I lived there. It was so frustrating to be sitting in traffic so much of my life that I took to photographing out of my windows or windshield to feel more productive or at least to keep myself from traditional road rage. Also, street life and real estate is visually interesting there. As an aside, I have to say the series came to a halt when I moved to North Carolina. Anyway, I didn't notice the fogging in the photos until later that night when I was having supper with a friend and looked at a magnification of a shot I did of him across the table; his nose and mouth were blurry. A quick look at the lens told the whole story. 
Examining earlier pictures, including a bowl of fruit I shot before leaving to drive around, struck me with a sense of wonderful serendipity...how cool it was that the shmootz added an element of soft focus shifting for the eye to enjoy as it wandered around the image.
I love when life offers little surprises and shifts to encounter and make us slow down for an instant......May they all be all be enjoyable and uplifting.
