Getting Back into It

     In my last year of law school I got back into photography. I can’t say why, but it became a mandate from some higher force. I’d fallen out of it for years because of college, jobs, no time and no money for film, but in that year I decided to live in a $36/month hotel room in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco so that I could buy a new 35mm camera. At that time all I knew was that I couldn’t afford both a decent place to live and the camera. I wasn’t aware that the camera was just a part of what I needed to get, and that my life would change forever in that year.
     My room was down an extremely dingy, unloved hallway, and I had a small window that looked out on an alley. There was a bare light
bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling, over an old iron bed that creaked with any movement. Against one wall was an inset area containing a sink, and on the floor below it was a piece of tattered linoleum covering the threadbare carpeting. When I stepped on it cockroaches would scurry out. The shared bathroom down the hall was so grimy I never used it. Instead, I got up early in the morning, went to the Y to work out and shower, and then continued on to school. Outside of the hotel, at night, there were a lot of hookers on the street and hanging out on the stoop, and an after-hours nightclub next-door with very dangerous looking bouncers. Needless to say, I took my life and health in my hands in order to get that camera. In return, my life began to improve.
     The Fairfax Hotel, itself, provided some wonderful photographic opportunities. One weekend morning I awoke early and walked out of the hotel to brilliant sunshine. The early light struck the old doorknob against the battered blood red door in a way that made it look like abstract art. I ran back up to the room to get the camera, and shot the picture before that light was lost moments later. The next day the door was painted black, and I knew that the light on the previous morning had directed me to take the photo before this humble, beautiful composition was lost forever. Another morning I awoke and looked out to the alley. There, before me, was a simple scene – a man dozing in his kitchen beside his stove. But it wasn’t a kitchen. It was an alley. Someone had disposed of an old stove and a chair, and a homeless man in the night had gone to sleep on the chair.

     I’m a believer that opportunities are given
to us when we are ready for them, and I was meant to start seeing in that year,
the last year of my law school education.