The only thing worse than taking the 1:20am out of grand central is missing the 1:20am out of grand central, because there aint another train until six or something. So Kathy's friend Sally came to New York and they decided to have dinner and see a show, and I got invited along with a random allotment of other people.

"So anyone we know gonna be there aside from Nam?" I asked Kathy on the way to dinner where we were meeting Sally and the rest of the crew.

She explained that Sally was going to be there, and Sally's ex-girlfriend and the girl Sally was dating now... I felt like asking if there were going to be any strait women there, but that might be rude. Dinner was excellent. Two of our random crew with was a couple of blond Swedish women working for part of a company which did not get bought out by The Company. They were both spoken for, but I enjoyed chatting with them about different cultures and different places anyway.

Then we went to The Donkey Show, which was essentially Mid Summer Night's Dream without the high-falutin' Shakespeare-speak set in a disco... only the audience dances in the disco with the actors. Oberon's gal was completely naked from the waist up except for two strategically placed butterflies, if you take my meaning. There were equally scantily clad men in the production as well, for those of you who prefer that. The cast mingled in character with us as we waited to get in. I highly recommend it if you like fun and don't enjoy things that aren't fun.

After the show the disco continued and I kept dancing with my friends until at 12:45am, when I decided to make a dash and catch the last train. I wish I could have stayed longer, because the thumping of the music and the dance floor was calling me. I said my goodbyes and hailed a cab. As I write this I am on the train to Croton-Harmon stoping which stops at all local stops. Switch to the Poughkeepsie there, which gets me to Beacon and home at something like three in the morning. I am going to be soooo tired tomorrow.

I was down in the city again yesterday, specifically to photograph the reflections in buildings using my 100mm macro lens. I wanted to isolate small areas where two textures intersected, as my most successful photograph from Color1 was of this genre and I wanted to explore that further. (I will most likely eventually post the photograph, but I am still deciding in what form to present it and the pictures which go with it).

One of the neat things about NYC (for me at least) is that I often run into professional photographers working. I think it is natural for photographers at every level to check out what equipment others in the field are using. As described in Shutterbabe (see last entry) there is a sort of pecking order. Pros use Nikon or Leica, locals use Minolta or Olympus. (What does that make me? I use both Nikon and Minolta equipment, not to mention the TLR Rollieflex).

In Grand Central Terminal I saw a photographer with a medium format camera (not a Hasselblad, but nothing to be scoffed at either) photographing a pair of models dressed as you might see in a fashion magazine (next month, you probably will see them). With all the noise and the hub-ub, I probably would not have noticed them at all, since the photographer was up on a different level than the models and shooting down on them, except that the photographer was setting her camera exactly where I had planned to set my camera to do one of those highly cliché pictures of GCT in black and white with some people blurred and some not due to a long exposure. I can't remember what kind of camera she had, but it got me to thinking (again) that I really would like to have my own medium format camera. I want a Hasselbald though, since that is what I learned with in my lighting class and the glass the lenses are to die for. Can't afford it though.

Then as I was out doing the real work I had set out to do (down in south Manhattan) I passed someone with a Leica. Leica make these really high quality 35mm range finder cameras with incredible optics. I wouldn't mind having one of those either. Can't afford that either though.

The coolest spotting ever was one day I was going to see the Concord with a friend of mine, and we passed by Jesus Christ being photographed by a photographer with a large format view camera. Forget about Jesus for a minute though, that view camera was cool. It's so big and bulky that you carry it around with a large tripod attached because you really can't use it without one it is so big and heavy. I had seen a view camera once before, but not one this big. It probably exposed 8x10 negatives. That's 8 inches by 10 inches. You could easily blow up a neg or slide that size to cover the side of a small building without noticing any grain. Can not even come close to affording that one. Guess you have to choose your economic battles.

About a month later I was looking thorough one of those tasteless men's fashion magazines (which I do sometimes to critique the photographs) and right there was Jesus Christ walking through Manhattan. One of the shots was at the very same location we had seen him at too.