Toribio, however, hates it:

I just look upward:

Sometimes I think my photos are just absolutely singular and cannot be categorized together into one thing.  Other times I just want to put them together into categories.  Other times I feel like they are three different patterns that if worn together would go, but not match.

Here is one example of things going but not matching:

If could paint, this is what I would paint.  Two modals in that sentence.  Score:

Vienna?

Budapest?

Madrid?

No!!!!

Downtown Crossing:

I’ve had this blog nearly four years and have never really revealed anything up here about myself.  I’m not going to start today, but I think it is important that people know the inspiration behind the photos.

Years ago I was an intern in Washington DC.  I mean years ago.  The other other guy was president.  The current president was a glint in some Chicagoan’s eye.  I mean he wasn’t a glint in his mother’s eye, but he was no where to be seen.

Three days a week I worked at what was before my current job, the greatest job I have ever had.  Two days a week there was class going and other things.  The other things involved long stretches without sleeping.  On those two days a week we had class at a place called the Brookings Institution.  All I remember from that place was the continual pouring into glasses of water to stay awake after I had consumed multiple cups of coffee.  I was young!

Everyday I would walk the halls of the Brookings Institute and they had the most amazing set of photographs.  This is a political think tank, quite a famous one, but this place also had a remarkable collection of modern photos.  On the walls were these photos by this Japanese photographer whose name escapes me at the moment and he photographed these insanely wide expanses of water.  I used to sit in class, sip my water and wonder.  Did he take that photo with a large format camera?  Does he have a Hasselblad?  When am I going to get a Hasselblad?  How can I get one?  What kind of processing technique did he use?  Was it on slides?

Meanwhile, some political expert would be going on and on about something very important like redistricting or the role of third parties in American politics.  Yes, this is important I should not knock this and I did learn a lot, but it was the photographs that I remember.

In the years since, I have shot the water many a time to try and reproduce the photos I saw.  I might be getting close to what I saw. But what I do realize is that if politics were really meant to be my path, I would remember what the guy said and not recounting my memories of photos I saw [redacted] year ago:

As it is Friday and as I am operating on the last remnants of my internal gas tank, my thoughts turned away from high minded science to more earthly things, names this month’s editions of Vogue and Allure.  Yes, there it is.  I am not the great intellect I claim to come across as.

I read Vogue on the way in.  Well, looked at the photos as you don’t read Vogue as much as glance through the pages at the words “grounded” “normal” and “no makeup” or whatever tripe is in their celebrity profiles, going straight to the photos.  And the photo are usually at least above average.  They did quite a nice job this month with an editorial featuring a model named “Arizona Muse.”  Vogue photos usually look like something out of the Sears catalog, but these were interesting.

Suddenly I looked up and said to myself “this looks like a fashion logo of some kind.”  Having the camera handy:

Doesn’t that look all high fashion and expensive?  Or was my perception affected by the perfume samples from the magazine combined with the lack of caffeine in my system at that moment?  One shall never know.

But what one knows for a fact is that I need to be amused at all times.  Or else I get bored and if I get bored I start pointing my cell phone at various people.  And pressing the picture making button.  Next to me this afternoon stood a man wearing a trench coat, some kind of chain around his neck, a safety pin as a ring and sunglasses blocking out the bright sunlight inside the green line train, whilst it was underground.  I snapped a quick surreptitious photo, before said subject asked if I took his photo.  Think brain, think think think FLATTERY.  Oh well, I did but I just like the way you look.  He said “you could have asked.”  And he actually obliged.  It ain’t Vogue, but neither is the Green line:

And there you have it.  Fashion.  Green Line.  Together, as good intended.