It's Lonely in the Middle

[Lightning Rod]

I had a friend who was a photographer. We all called him LP because those were his initials.
LP worked for the Dallas Morning News as a news photographer.
One night after the bars had closed, we were in my hovel drinking coffee and smoking and talking. This was back in the late seventies when the digital revolution was on the horizon.
LP said to me, "The world is about to change before our eyes. (he was talking about digital photography) This art that I have spent half my life learning is going to go right out the window. You know what? It's lonely in the middle."

He was right, of course. Nobody thinks about F-stops and light meters and emulsions and developers and dark rooms anymore.

LP was dead two weeks later. He was shooting some event at the Anatole Hotel in Dallas and when he came back to the parking lot someone was robbing his car. My guess is that he took their picture. He carried three cameras around his neck. When they found him with a .22 bullet in his heart, the only thing missing was his favorite camera--the Lica. The other two were still around his neck.

It's lonely in the middle.

[lescaret]

LR, for a brief prose riff this was really touching. Compelling sadness awash in remembering. A flash of your light.

LP's Decisive Moment certainly not as Cartier-Bresson would have it.

And the Leica gone, where? A pawn shop likely, a snort in the nose, a hose around the arm. Today, like Peter Yarrow's 1973 homemade guitar, it would show up on eBay. At least Peter Yarrow is still alive.

LP should be too. Drinking and smoking.

And so too the actress leaving the bar with friends on the Lower East Side, 3 a.m., accosted by stupid kids. "What're you gonna' do, shoot us?". Sadly, yes. Beauty is no shield at the end of a fool's handgun.

[Lightning Rod]

Thanks, lescaret

I was wondering how you spelled

Leica

Here's the upshot of the story.

They caught the guy that killed LP a couple of days later.

Then about a month after that the Dallas County Jail released this character by mistake. He was at large for about another year before they re-arrested him. By that time LP was cold in the ground.

[Axanderdeath]

SaD STUFF LR

[jimboloco]

He was right, of course. Nobody thinks about F-stops and light meters and emulsions and developers and dark rooms anymore.

I have a friend, Raul, who shoots in black and white film, always has. He says that now that film is obsolete, it becomes wholly an art form, like a daguerotype or silver print....

the snippet of your amigo shows me your caring spirit
when i go ballistic it
will be to save someone
from the big hit

i am always ready

i have a snippet of cops beating a guy in a phone booth
was thinking about taking zlatco's cartoon form
an playing it out

christ cops loose cannons
just when we need them most
driving drunk boats

a tender scene lr
jus like you