Privacy Island

Privacy Island

words and pictures by Jamie Jobb

Often I visit a location for an intensive photo shoot, pushing reason aside and letting intuition take the camera.  I don’t think too much about any particular frame until the image has made it into the computer.  

But on a recent visit to Berkeley, I chose to be more patient; to stay in one spot and let the photos find me.  Like a Sanford Meisner-trained actor, my role was to listen and observe with full presence.  

To wait … and let the moment decide.

I was sitting in front of the French Hotel across from Alice Waters’ storied Chez Panisse -- the heart and soul of “the Gourmet Ghetto” as the neighborhood officially calls itself (http://www.gourmetghetto.org/).

Like most folks on that block of Shattuck, I was rushing nowhere after a fine meal.

Normally I see in wide angles, but this week I brought a telephoto lens which forced me to take a more voyeuristic approach to the day.  As I sat scanning the street with a cup of Peet’s fine Big Bang blend, nothing came to view.  

My eyes were too wide open.  

Slowly the coffee focused my brain and between pages of The Daily Cal, I suddenly realized I'd failed to notice a young woman scanning her cell phone in the middle of the street -- right on the median strip!  Was she searching for the best Gourmet Groupon for lunch?  Was she done with her meal, and waiting for someone?  Was she relaxing after graduation (still ongoing were UC commencements).

Clearly, with tons of traffic whizzing by her preoccupied head, the young woman was in no wide-angled frame of mind.  But that didn’t really matter at all.  Despite her careless spirit, she taught me a valuable lesson by just sitting there, posing in the middle of the street: Slow down and smell the pictures.

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Here's a video of hand-held stills taken all from a single vantage point, but in another location.  The camera is catching reflections covering four blocks of Ward Street in downtown Martinez.  The shots are slow, timed to the powerful tune by No Speed Limit.  You may rush the cursor through the video to see the stills, if you don't like the music:

https://archive.org/details/IreneAndKarenDrippingCoffee

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Also see:

https://www.boredpanda.com/people-matching-artworks-stefan-draschan/?utm_source=bp_art&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=BPFacebook

http://mymodernmet.com/ryan-weideman-nyc-taxi-photographer/

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