It's tourist season y'all, and this year there's no bag limit! Just don't shoot'em with anything kinetic. We just got back from a grand adventure out on the old Route 66, and although there was plenty to see and shoot I couldn't help but keep turning the camera on the folks around me.
Think it's some sort of natural human impulse, you get somewhere new and you get a sort of tunnel vision trying to experience it. If you can shake loose of that it can be fun, the people around you can be just as interesting as the things you'd come for.
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is really good for this. With the right kind of eyes and weather you can see for thirty miles or more from the top, and with only ten minutes to take it all in everyone is glued to the windows. Hell, with a wide angle lens you can even combine landscape and street photography.
Hunting tourists is a lot like hunting ducks, works best if they're blind to you. Realtree doesn't work as well with tourists though...
Since we were in Santa Fe we had to pay a visit to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The museum itself was quite interesting but the crowd was equally fascinating. It was my introduction to that sort of scene and I felt as if I'd stumbled into some sort of peculiar subculture. Pretty sure it deserves a photo project unto itself but that's for another day.
Was wandering around the basilica in Santa Fa and somehow wound up getting a tour of the Stations of the Cross. Hadn't realized what a morbid lot the Catholics were. Where I grew up it was more handling snakes and speaking in tongues. Six of one, half dozen of the other I suppose. Anyways, to revive one's spirits after all that there was a guy busking in the park with harp. Just seemed like tourist bait but I don't think I've ever seen anyone busking with that particular instrument before. Anybody else ever come upon someone pickin' & grinnin' in the park with a harp?
'Cadillac Ranch, the gateway drug to juvenile delinquency!' Remember kids, you can spray paint these cars, but no others! What kid is going to believe that?
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I see the game warden.
