Architecture of Cities: Julius Shulman and the Light of My Moon

If Scout was a boy: Would Harper Lee have named him “Scout”: Maybe Gregory Peck knew the answer:

Scout’s inquisitive is mine: We merely share similar symbiotic curious curiosities: A history of curiosities have become truth seekers reality; Adventurer’s dreams: Everyone who sought the secrets that behold more are mine: I have made curiosities for days and decades: The cameras’ frames have become my curiosities:

The camera’s voice(s) I listen to are those of others melded into my moments: There are no audio serenades: I am merely a passenger: The paths my lens espies are mine: I am a passengering adventurer with no end in sight.

I no longer remember where I sat when I saw Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon:

The moon is a place that my dreams travel to every day, every night: It has become my camera’s life: I track my watch until it seems to appear: A camera does not wait because it is lucky:

A camera waits because there are only a few truths in the science of photography: The art in architecture:

Decades ago I emerged from the most excruciatingly deliciously pleasurable mentorship that a person would enjoy: I remember almost forty-five years ago: I stood with the famous modernist photographer, Julius Shulman: I loaded the master’s eight by ten camera: The urban/rural mall waited: We waded in the heat’s heart for hours in the sun: He begged me to tell him what we were waiting for: My visual career was shaped by just one simple abstraction: Shulman never explained why we wait: He understood the delightful excruciating pleasures of the single capture:

He chortled for a few seconds: “Richard, shoot: Take the picture”: Today I know Shulman’s history explains why to wait, why we wait: My camera became a tool for my eyes: My camera sees before I do:

Oscar Niemeyer in Paris: The other light

I was once accused of being lucky at what I do: The circumstances of the shallow and narrow minded architects’ lack of perception burned in me for seconds: How could my camera be lucky: I subscribed to the urgency awaiting me: My lens was soon to freeze frame a moment: I waited for one more single capture: Days of storms filled the skies: Rain sent me to naked sheltering: Only a rainbow could save my days: The rainbow arrived: A dream became a reality: People cannot make sense of desires’ opportunities:

Luck is mankind’s religion. I remember: An Oscar Niemeyer temple of design awaited me in Los Angeles: I visited the clients home over several days: Their anxious voices wondered often: Often they wondered not what I may see: Their anxious minds wondered how I might see: I knew I had to capture more than Oscar had planned for: I had to capture enough: Some people know enough is when the camera can breathe: There is an entire exhale: The capture was near:

I voiced passionately, I needed the moon: When the moon arrived It arrived almost full: My eyes became filled with Hubbles’ galaxies: The entire moment’s second was measured in the skies hallucinogenic patterns:

I arrived for what only I needed to see: If Julius taught me one thing, he begged me to wait for the moon: I stood near to touch my George Méliès: My entire oeuvre is completely an adherent: I am a disciple to the light of moons:

The pictures that live in my memories may not fade yet: I still plead to remember when I first saw “A Trip to the Moon”: It underlines like some sort of historic fiction the histories of my moments:

My eyes have claimed the history that my camera has seen: I merrily selfishly need to reasonably record my futures’ present, and the presents’ past:

Days and years I have walked my cities: I remember my fellow travelers: The voices: The voices who have shaped my eyes: Everyday in truth and fiction voices remind me of my moon’s light:

I am neither a clever photographer nor a mere practitioner: I live within a known universe: I see all of the music that allows me to compose my time: My own moments.