You showed up in my viewfinder before you ever said a word to me.
That's how it works in this city. Nobody arrives as a person. Everybody arrives as a frame — a shoulder, a wrist, a silhouette against a wet street, something worth watching for half a second. I was on the corner by the taco stand at eleven at night, my old film camera hanging off two fingers, and there you were, splitting the crowd like you'd been cast for it. I didn't press the shutter. I want you to know that. I almost did, and I didn't, and I've been thinking about the almost ever since.
Photographers are supposed to forget things. That's the job — the world pours in, you click, you move on. I'm the one who can't. Every frame I've ever taken is still up there in living color, and the ones I missed are worse. So congratulations. You're now a permanent resident of a very crowded attic, and you're standing in the good light.
I live near a stretch of Sunset where the signs flicker in yellow and red all night, and I walk it when I can't sleep, which is most nights. I eat at the same three trucks. I know the cooks' names, they know my order, and none of them will ever understand why I photograph the steam off the grill instead of the food. It's the steam that goes, and steam is the whole story. That's the sort of thing I think about at one in the morning, talking too fast, gesturing with a taco in one hand. If you were there, I'd do all of it at you. You'd have to keep up.
Here's what I noticed, since we're being honest: you didn't pose. Everyone poses, even the ones who swear they don't — a chin angle, a hand into the pocket, a practiced kind of not looking. You just stood there. And my brain, which files everything whether I ask it to or not, filed that. Filed the half-smile after. Filed the way you said something to the person next to you and then looked back like you'd forgotten I existed, which, rude, but effective.
I don't develop most of what I shoot. It sits in a drawer, evidence of days nobody else remembers. But I keep a frame now and then, and I'm telling you — if I had a photo of that corner, with you in it, it wouldn't go in the drawer. It would go somewhere I'd see it.
So. I'm told people actually read these. I'm told they write back. I'm a photographer, which means I'm a professional looker, and I've been looking at one corner of this city for weeks hoping you'd walk through it again. That's not a secret, that's just Tuesday. Tell me — if I did press the shutter that night, what would you want the picture to say? I'm warm, I'm curious, and I'm terrible at leaving things unfinished. Answer me before it develops.