……, ya don’t need a camera bag cause your coat has very nice pockets. Shhhhhhh….I have more camera bags than my wife has pocketbooks. Oh yeah…it’s just that mine are hidden in the darkroom that doesn’t get used anymore because digital cameras have won me over even tho my darkroom is a Leica darkroom and my cameras are Fuji or some other thing so I had to have a good use for the darkroom besides being a true photographer so the darkroom is now the hidden dark zone of mystery that my wife has not ide to enter because all the bad chemicals in the world are stored in there waiting to fly into her lungs and make her a human being. I wonder how she thought about all that….hmmmm…..

So my criteria for coat purchasing procedures are different than my wife’s. First off, I look at the pockets. Then after deciding if my coat at hand can be a camera bag, we go to step 2.

Step 2 is hood evaluation and testing. See, if ya have this coat on and it has a hood…the hood is not allowed to interfere with camera strap neck installation procedures. The camera must be able to go from pocket storage space to the chest working region without interference form the hood as you try to get the strap over your head and under the hood so that the strap can rest against the collar and do this without looking like a complete idiot as you fight with the HOOD because it wants to keep the strap from going where YOU want it to go because you don’t want to look like an armature with your fancy dancy camera and everyone is watching you and in a half hour when the hood and collar battle against the camera strap is over, you can never walk that street again because everyone will know your no better than a 6 year old kid.

…..so then the wifey gets to get in the mix with coat acquisition. Of course her being from Russia, has a different set of husbands coat acquisition guidelines because she says she loves me and wants to make sure that I will be warm when she grants me permission to go out and make photos. She doesn’t care about the things menz photographers care about. She likes coats that will keep me warm in the frozen tundra region of Center City Philadelphia. I told here there exist grates in the ground that have heat coming from them and I can always war up on those if need be. She told me that those grates are there because the Good Politicians of the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia put those grates for the Homeless people so they can have heat while they go looking for food, shelter and money.

That’s the first thing she ever said to me that ever made a drop of sense. So after many a trip to Boscov’s or Macy’s, we will find common ground for the coat purchasing procedures. I never feel what Tanya wants for me in the coat selection until….Mummer’s Day Parade. Then…I all the sudden get the gist of what she was talking about during the coat episode. As I am out on the street looking for photos, feeling nice and warm…cameras in pockets, lenses in pockets, batteries in chest pockets….I get it! I am warm and feel like I can shoot al day….but my hands…..

my hands…the glove testing, acquisition and purchasing procedures, that’s another story for another time…..

later….don