Photo Post - Downtown San Diego at Night

[Note: these photos might take a second to load, especially if you are on dial-up.]

I've been up tonight taking photos of downtown, editing the photos, drinking coffee, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and listening to electronica on the iTunes radio stations. This is good stuff.

Earlier, I went downtown to take some photos, but I won't bore you with more shots of the bay, although I did take a few. If you want to see the bay, take a look north ∆.

After the shots of the bay, I decided to be adventurous and walk the west side of downtown and take some photos. Here are nine [of the 20 I took] high-quality photos of downtown San Diego taken just a couple hours ago. Click on the photos to see the 700x525 photo. Because I didn't compromise the quality other than resizing, these might take a while to load. Most of them are about 400-500kb each. Also, I take back anything bad I've ever said about my Sony P-92 camera, because these are by far the best photos I have taken with this camera. My camera just doesn't do very well in low-light conditions, but these were all well-lit photos.

One of the photos has a short story about my encounter with some bums after I took a photo of the parking lot a bunch of them were sleeping in.










Above: This is easily the best photo I took all night, in my opinion.




Above: The only photo that really has a story is this one, when I took a picture of a parking lot full of sleeping bums. After I quietly took this shot, I continued to walk and hang a right up the street.

As I was hunched down with my tripod taking a photo of another building, I hear from behind, "Hey man, why are you taking photos of this parking lot?" I turn around and see two bums a few feet behind me, seemingly looking for some Friday night action. Apparently they weren't all sleeping as I had thought.

"Personal use." He looks confused.

"Personal use, huh? Well why are you taking photos of bums in a parking lot?" He's the only one talking at this point.

"Because I think it's a sad state of affairs to see people sleeping on the streets and I want to document it and remember it."

"Did you ever think maybe you should ask who you're taking a picture of before you do it?"

"Look, I took a picture of a parking lot. I'm not bothering anyone and these photos aren't going to be in the paper tomorrow, so don't worry." In my head I'm thinking, Not the paper, but in a couple hours they will be on the Internet. [Who is this harming? Obviously, they were just looking to mess around with me.]

I grab my tripod and stand up. Then the talkative one shuts up real quick, noticing how tall I am.

I say, "Do you want me to erase them? I'll erase them off the camera if you want."

"Oh no, that's ok. We're just wondering what you're doing is all. We just don't think it's right, but it's cool."

Then the one doing most of the talking leaves abruptly, going back to huddling in the corner of the parking lot. I continued to talk to the other guy, Mike, for a couple minutes. He was drunk of course, and he kept trying to shake my hand and be all buddy-buddy with me. I think he was kind of embarrassed that the other one came on so strong and then left so quickly. He asked me if I go to college and what I do. I told him I go to college and I'm in the military and then at least he showed some human decency. Then he told me that his father was a retired captain in the Navy. I told him I was just trying to get by, just like everyone else. Then he said something about fighting, that on the streets you 'gotta do what you gotta do', pointing back at the other guy, conveying that maybe if the other guy had been a bit more rowdy I should have fought with him.

Then right as he was about to go, he turns around and asks me for a couple bucks. I shell out two crinkly dollar bills. Gracefully, Mike says, "I'm going to go get a drink, man."

I say, "Don't spend it all in one place. [Yeah, right.] Have a good one." I figured what the hell, I'll give it to this guy just so the other guy realizes that he shouldn't have been such a dick to me.


Above: This is the photo I was taking when the bums came up behind me.