So last fall, while I was in Sardinia, I took a little side trip. The festival we were at was at the north end of the island, in a little town called San Teodoro. From there, I took a bus to the train station in Olbia, and the train took me all the way across the island. I don’t want to belabor the point, but I could take a bus and train, about 6 hours total, to get to a place that was about a three hour drive away. Whole island has the population of less than the greater bay area, and yet somehow high speed rail in california ‘doesn’t make sense’? They’ve played us for fools.
Anyway. These aren’t in any particular order, I exported them in numerical order and then they got randomized when I uploaded them. No big deal. I was in the town for a total of like 24 hours? And there’s 25 pictures, so pretty good. I don’t know why when I do something like this I shoot like it’s National Geographic back when they were decent. Walk and shoot, walk and shoot. Wait, look, shoot some more.
Unlike those guys (almost to a person, guys, and if you want to see the seeds of their self-destruction, well, there’s one), I don’t have any patience or, as it turns out, time. Where they could sit on a single corner for days to wait for one shot, I move around probably too fast. Impatient, maybe, but also there’s so much to see, especially in a new place. This goes back to what I was saying about not slowing down and working a subject a while back. Knowing I only have a certain number of hours left in a day definitely plays a part.
There’s also a little alarm bell, a little flag in my head that goes off when some things happen that says ‘this is important! something is happening! take a lot of pictures of it!’ and for some reason the 20 minutes after takeoff and the 20 minutes before landing in an airplane are always flagged. Big landmarks, definitely flagged. Times Square in New York, I could photograph there for days (and have, I go basically every time I’m in NYC, it’s a sickness).
Something I’m thinking about for San Pablo though. I started out with the thesis, handed to me on a silver platter by Robin, that it was the most interesting street in the Bay Area, more so than Market or Polk in SF or Telegraph in Oakland/Berkeley. But the place I’ve ended up is that any street (any place) becomes interesting the more you look at it, and also it becomes harder and harder to pin down what you’re talking about.
This town was cool though, not super touristy in the bad way, good vibes, nice light even at night. Nothing shouty, but nothing terrible either. Lots of hills.
