on the streets of Paris, with spices from Kashgar...

Yashimiseus, Paris!  Finally back to this familiar city in its familiar state, after the rain.

I feel like I ate meat for an entire century and French just seems to be such an easy language now that compared to what I had to live through in Kashgar. But I somehow managed to learn it, especially fluent in situations of bargaining and drinking.  Anla blesses me.

A real excuse, this site cannot be accessed from China, my stories are all in my photos, being sent to you by email.  

How many cameras do you need to have to call yourself a photographer?

This morning within one hour and half, I bought three cameras on a Sunday antique market,

The first one is one of those original Polaroid land cameras, which uses 600 series peel off films. There is a flash that comes with it and it is orange color.

The second one, a Rollei B35, probably the smallest single reflex camera you can have that is completely manual control, it uses normal135mm film.

Number three, a Russian stereo photo camera. For those who don’t know what stereo is, it is a technique which allow you to be view the image in 3 dimension but through a certain viewing device, kind of like those 3D colored glasses we used to wear. This particular camera has two lenses and two separated camera dark rooms, each lens takes an image, the two images are taken with a distance apart, which equals the distance between two eyes. It uses regular 120 medium format films. I would not be able to give you the name of this camera, because it is in Russian alphabet and I love it.

As I bring these cameras home and put them next to all my other cameras, I couldn’t help wondering - how many cameras does one need to call him/herself a photographer?

I did the count, 19 cameras, no, 21 cameras including the small digital one and the one on my cell phone. I have 21 cameras all together. I think I can safely call myself a photographer now. Since money I ever got from selling my prints or any type of photography work would only mounts to about 0.00000000001% of all the money I ever spent on cameras, films, papers, dark room equipments, chemistry, lab work and etc, I can even call myself a fine art photographer, meaning a real artist, not like those who work in advertising.

When painters and sculptors change models or lovers to seek for inspiration, we, photographers have the right to acquire new cameras. 21 is, however, a number that largely exceeds the number of boys I ever dated in my life, maybe that is the reason why I am a better photographer than I am a girlfriend. I am also better at keeping my cameras than keeping my boys; they somehow fit nicely in my closets.

Being the owner of 21 cameras, the real frustration comes when I have to choose which one to bring when I go out for a little stroll; and even worse, when I go on vacation -Which ones to bring? I begin to understand why Chinese Emperors in the ancient times always had 5 or 6 wives and a huge crew following him wherever he traveled to.

While suffering from the frustration of choices, I keep thinking about those other cameras I looked at today but did not buy. I somehow have an pretty good idea of the next camera I will need to get.

My friend, am I a real photographer or what!!!!???

Life of an extra

I don’t know how I got into this, but I spent the past 2 days being an extra in an experimental film. The film is 40 minutes long and without any actors really, so technically speaking extras are sort of stars in this film. The days started very early and ended rather late, but most of the time I just discussed football match with the sound engineer or teach yoga to other extras. Another essential activity was to choose which plate for lunch, which usually took at least half an hour. I honestly don’t know why they would need all those equipments and cables and that huge van, but at any given time, there was always someone running around because there was one piece of equipment missing. I consider my debut as an extra a great success, because a) I managed not to trip over those rails built for movement of the camera while crossing over to the other side of the room; b) none of my scenes exceeded a 3rd take; c) I found a way to force my phone number to the cute sound engineer without the awareness of rest of the crew.

Now the only thing left for me to do: wait for that phone call and become famous!

Welcome to the life of an extra.

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