Don’t look for photos on this post….ain’t time for that. It’s 27F outside and Tanya & I walked to the ShopRite to get the things she needs to make a lavish, well lavish Philly, well…lavish NE Philly on Montour Street dinner. She’s downstairs cooking what no doubt will be another dinner to never forget….A big crowd tonight, her and I and of course Barsik the camera bag inspector.
I’m upstairs cleaning the Fuji’s and lenses to get ready for tomorrow’s Mummers Parade. I set the clocks so that capture time is recorded and everything is in order. Ya know many years ago the parade route was wide open. What I mean is that there was no fences to constrain anyone from making contact or going into the crowds or streets. I loved that. I just mingled around and made the photos I wanted without any freedoms being fenced in and or out. Then the City felt it needed to put fences all around the parade route and I was really upset and so were the Mummers. For a few years I went to the parade and felt restricted in movement and in the right of passage.
Then in 2011 as I was leaving the parade, I bumped into an old friend that was a great shooter for many news agencies etc. His name was Bob C……He passed away this year around March and was 83 at that time. So Bob asked me how I was doing and we talked and I felt really happy and at one with myself talking to Bob. He was the kinda shooter that loved to get in the middle of things and I’m just the opposite, he knew that.
Bob said to me….”Don, isn’t it great how they put those fences all around?” I said no Bob…why would you think that? He then said something to me that I will never forget as long as I exist, the other side included.
He said…“Don, those fences are for you. They keep everyone contained so that you can work easily and move thru the parade watchers like you always do. You never shoot the parade like other people. You alway shot it like watching from the inside, just like your street work, how life effects people…from the inside, you have to see those fences as being put there for you to work and not as a barrier from your work.”
I should add that I met Bob thru Ding McNulty. So obviously the life lessons I gathered came from a source that I try to pass on. So now as the year passes on and we move to another set of numbers, I think I’ll try to understand something I may have just taken for granted for many years. See, I always understood the lessons of life and photography etc that Ding, Bob and others passed on to me. I learned these lessons well and applied all to my work and more importantly…LIFE. What I didn’t get for many years was the actual source of the lesson. I don’t mean the passeron person or mentor, whatever. I mean the actual crux of the spark that created the material to make the lesson.
So, it’s up to me to try to decipher it all and at the end of the year, going into New Years I do have a lesson learned to tell to all…….Ding, Peter, Bob won’t like this but here’s 1…..
If you want to bring New Years in, in a special romantic way…..heed my warning! Don’t drink beer and eat hard boiled eggs……..
Happy New Years to all and to all a Good Night…….
