10.11.26: Angles in the sky

‍I enjoy photographing city scenes. The colors, the textures, and the architecture provide plenty of opportunities for interesting photographs.

‍In the pre-digital age of photography, I would often shoot city scenes in black and white. The reason was more financial than artistic: black and white film was less expensive to purchase and process than color. That made the decision an easy one.

‍Today, with digital, everything defaults to color. There’s no cost benefit to black and white. But when I’m shooting in a city, I’m always looking for scenes with strong lines and angles, the type of scenes that will work best in black and white. It’s an artistic decision, and a decision often based on the lighting conditions when I’m framing it in the viewfinder of my camera.

‍This is one of those scenes.

‍Excalibur, a steel sculpture by artist Beverly Stoll Pepper, stands in a common area outside the entrance to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building (the orange building to the right) in San Diego. The sculpture consists of three triangular forms reaching across the ground and toward the sky between buildings.

‍When I first saw the sculpture and its relationship to the federal building and other neighboring buildings, I knew that the angles and lines would create an interesting composition. But the morning was a bit overcast, which muted the colors of the surrounding buildings and turned the sky to a non-photogenic white. So I planned to convert those photos to black-and-white, and I used one of those on this site about 18 months ago.

‍The following day, I cut through the same area while returning to the hotel. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and the orange surface of the federal building was popping in the sunlight.

‍I looked at Excalibur again. This time, the blue San Diego sky was reflecting in the glass surfaces of neighboring buildings, and the black surface of the sculpture provided a dark, stoic contrast to the surroundings. 

‍I composed a shot, again using the angles and lines as the primary subject. But this time I also had colors to work with.

‍I enjoyed doing photography during our visit to San Diego, but the trip was far from enjoyable.

‍For years, San Diego was one of my favorite cities to visit on business trips. It was clean and walkable. But I was surprised how much the city had changed in the six years between my previous visit and this trip in 2018. It still had the nice weather, but much of the “clean and walkable” description no longer applied.

‍First, the city had been invaded by rental electric scooters from a variety of companies. People could download an app, find a scooter location, and rent it on the spot and pay for the amount of time used. That sounds great … until you consider where the scooters are left when the rider is finished. The sidewalks were filled with scooters that had been discarded. When we weren’t dodging people riding scooters, we were stepping over discarded scooters. It made walking from point to point difficult.

‍Second, the homeless problem in San Diego has exploded like it has in many other California cities. We saw people sleeping on sidewalks or in temporary cardboard structures leaning against buildings throughout the downtown area and along the bay.

‍An example: We had a dinner reservation at a nice restaurant, but when we arrived, there was a man asleep in a ragged sleeping bag on the sidewalk outside the restaurant entrance. The only way to reach the entrance was to step over him.

‍I asked the restaurant manager if he had contacted city authorities to have the man moved. His facial expression showed frustration, then he told me the story. Every day for a couple of weeks, the man would arrive right before dinner time and take his place on the sidewalk, then fall asleep. The manager had contacted the police as well as city officials and had been told there was nothing they could do because the man was within his rights to sleep on the sidewalk in that spot. It was public property.

‍The manager said he was running a small business with about 30 employees on his payroll, paying city and state taxes (which are high in California), but had to watch as potential customers bypassed the entrance to his restaurant because a homeless person was sleeping on the sidewalk and blocking access to his business.

‍He shook his head and said, “You know, it’s really frustrating that his rights seem to outweigh my rights as a tax-paying business owner, but that’s the position the city has taken.”

‍I’m not a public policy expert, but it seems taking the “he has a right to sleep there” position does nothing to address the plight of the homeless.

‍Then there was our hotel, a nice Marriott property, that was selected as a target for a work stoppage by the national hotel workers union. Picketers stood outside the entrance day and night, blocking access and chanting. San Diego police were there to be sure nothing escalated, but because the sidewalk was public property, the picketers were within their rights to stand right outside the door and hassle hotel guests.

‍San Diego used to be one of my favorite cities to visit, but after the 2018 visit I’m in no hurry to return.