Pixley Tire Shop, Pixley, California, November 2009
I pulled off California State Highway 99 to photograph this tire shop. Tire shops and corrugated metal have always held a special fascination for me.
At that particular time, I was using my Nikon FM-3A (the last generation of the famous Nikon F/FM series professional manual camera bodies), which was loaded with Kodak Tri-X. Having exposed the last frame, I was about to return to my car when this little boy happened by.
Thinking on my feet, with no time to reload, I took my Motorola cell phone from my pocket and snapped this picture up.
Now, anyone who knows me will tell you my deep-seated loathing for digital photography. To me, it's cheating -- damned if I'm going to just flush thirty-plus years of acquired knowledge of real photography down the drain just because somebody invented a way to mimic photography.
But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Which means, don't let a great photo opportunity pass you by just because you're a retrograde purist (such as I) standing on ceremony.