I’ve pulled off the side of the road. I am taking pictures of the mountain. We are ALL taking pictures of the mountain. It is surprising how many people I see out here with all kinds of equipment. I am not talking about the casual tourist/sunday drive types with a quickie-digital-hold-at-arms-length type of camera. I’m talking cameras worth as much as my car and lenses as long as my leg. Okay, maybe not quite that long, but LONG. I barely fit into this group but whatever.

So I’m on the side of the road, my car door is open and I have some suitable tunes coming out from my car stereo. Im taking some pictures of the mountain at sunset – standing about 20 feet in front of my car. Another car pulls off the road right in front of me. A girl gets out. Perhaps about 25ish.

She starts taking pictures of the mountain. While I do not feel any sort of obligation to talk to strangers, and therefore this was not an “uncomfortable silence” per se, I nevertheless figured it would be friendlier to actually say something, as we’d been standing about 10 feet apart for a few minutes, doing exactly the same thing, with nary a word.

Naturally what I said was stupid, but not overly so, and was relatively related to both of our activites.

“So… Canon or Nikon”?

Yes, I realize thats a dumb question and who cares, but it was a seemingly appropriate intro to a conversation or at the very least something to start a conversation on.

“I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!!!”

Well, thats fantastic. Not only am I NOT hitting on you, there are no circumstances under which I would hit on YOU. No No No No and No. On top of it all… you DIDN’T answer my damn #$@##$# question. I’m glad that I wasn’t interested in her at all, as this might not have been a scenario of mirth and victory on my part, but one of disappointment. I had artfully converted what was not an uncomfortable silence into a relatively combative situation – all with a simple camera question. A truly skilled manoeuvre I must suggest. What I enjoyed about this whole exchange was my response. Delivered calmly and quickly after the vehemence of her rancour.

“Does HE shoot Canon or Nikon?”

She got back into her car and drove away.

I continued to shoot the mountains.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Misc. Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.