The Long Haul (part i)
My Flickr Pro account expires today. This is the photograph that, underexposed at exactly the right time on a lazy walk home from the office 2+ years ago, earned me the pro account. This terribly lucky picture nearly wasn’t taken at all. In November of 2007, I wrote:
One week ago, I met the creator of Flickr on the street outside a small grocery & deli near my apartment. He was sitting in a plastic lawn chair w/a laptop balanced on his knee, a steaming cup of tea to his right on a wire-mesh table.
I was walking home from my office on a Friday evening, the lip of a weekend, plodding up the congested hills of San Francisco taking photographs w/my new Holga. I saw him - laptop, tea steam & all - silhouetted against the sunset, which was then dipping its toes into the Pacific Ocean beyond the hills of Pacific Heights.
I didn’t know it was him. I wanted to take a photograph of the silhouette. He looked so busy, though, that I walked right past & turned the corner to my block. But! Halfway up the hill, I paused. I turned around & looked over the city which spills out like overflowing robes from that height. It was beautiful. I have difficulties letting such opportunities pass w/out seriously troubling my mind. So I cursed myself for being such a bother & went down the block to pester the silhouette, hoping I hadn’t missed the moment.
I hadn’t. He was there. The fading sun was still there. The city, there. Everything. I approached meekly. “Excuse me,” I said. “I hate so much to bother you. But you are absolutely silhouetted perfectly against that sunset there, & I already walked by once & I had to come back. Do you mind if I take your picture w/this toy camera? I’ll probably screw it up anyway. It’s new. It’s film, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He nodded. “Um, sure.”
I snapped the plastic button & the film exposed & it was over. “Thank you so much,” I said & bumbled off. At least, I meant to leave.
“Hey,” he called. “Where do you upload your photos?”
“Flickr,” I said. “My website is sort of sleeping until I can get a new digital camera.”
“Oh? Yeah, I created Flickr.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really. My wife & I created Flickr in Vancouver a few years ago.”
He invited me to sit & showed me the backend of Flickr (which destroyed all remaining doubts in my mind… there are some rad things behind-the-scenes), telling me the story of its accidental origins from within a videogame company. Being an ex-journalist, I deeply appreciated such casual conversation on the street, knowing how often he must have to tell that story to newswriters all over the world.
We looked at my Flickr stream for a minute. I showed him the shot from when my old camera died, & he even ventured a theory as to why the picture decomposed as such… sensor stuffs. “I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s ok, I sort of love it.” He said it was definitely effed up.
In the end, I obviously did screw up this potentially lovely photograph. Of my entire first roll, this was the only one that didn’t turn out. Still I feel like I somehow didn’t miss anything.
True story.
PS. Maybe you noticed my new pro account? Stewart did that. Such a nice person! Thank you.
I cannot believe such a significant spell of time has passed since this day, since almost any single day of memory. Even the deepest pains look like gifts from far enough away, but this day was a gift from the very first moment.
(One thing I’m surprised I didn’t mention in the original caption was the surprising filters I saw on the backend of Flickr. Before he granted me the pro account, Stewart checked my account for a nazi-propaganda alert… Germany requested this feature, he said. Such is the world.)
