Diana

Over on Gaines street is a long low building heading straight back away from the street. This is Camera Work. Moving art is always a hassel, but once you are in Camera Work the hassel fades. The studio is cool and gray and open. You pull up a stool and begin to wish your photography took longer than it does. The stools are part of the attraction, genius roller stools salvaged from a state gov furniture dump and so popular Cindy once had to re-purpose one as a Christmas gift to a deserving client.


Enough about stools. Now I have a new reason to admire Cindy's knack for the quirky-ly useful. Cindy was talking about her and her husband's vacation in the south of France this spring. Does a professional photographer take photos on vacation, I wondered? Yes, she does, but laughed off taking any of her fancy cameras. I just take a Diana she said. What's that? Here, and she rooted around and handed over a digny plastic camera with $1 in marker on the top of it from an old yard sale.


A little plastic camera. People aren't intimidated by cheap plastic, Cindy explained. They will let you come right up to them. You can't require much of them with a cheap camera like that. Focus you select from four general ranges. Aperture is one of three dials on the bottom: Mr. Sun, Mr. Sun and Mr. Cloud, Mr. Cloud. Then she started on all the things you could do with it, double exposures and whatnot, but who cares really. A professional photographer uses a non-digital vintage plastic point 'n shoot for vacations. It made my whole day.