Seeing Beyond Sight Photo Challenge by ThaJinx
March 13th, 2007 10:28 PMI started by exploring the nearby payphones and stoplight, taking pictures in the direction of some faint music across the street before demanding that Julia help me cross in the other direction because I could hear a lot of voices there. I put a hand out upon crossing, and the ring on my finger ran into one of a several public art statues, striking up a really nice metal sound that I really wouldn't expect to hear from them. I tried taking pictures of a lot of the voices I was hearing near the Grape Escape wine bar at the corner, and on the way to the pizza place nextdoor ran into a lightpole; I made sure to try to take a picture of that.
I ended up stumbling onto a bench in front of the Piehole and sat down. Julia let me know that a dog was nearby, but before I could ask to pet it the owners walked off with it. Julia glanced at the camera screen and said it was pretty dark looking, and then I remembered that my camera, an old Canon Powershot A60, was sort of feeling its age. In other words, sometimes it won't get a picture, so you have to slap it around until it can see again. As a result, all the pictures I'd taken up to this point were entirely black. Instead of going down to the end of the block, which we were halfway down at this point, I opted to double back and call it even.
I caught a lot of voices near the wine bar and snapped off a few more shots there, landed a hand on the statues again, and slapped them with my ringed hand again just to hear the noise of them before taking more pictures. We then wandered back to the corner I'd started on, where I took more pictures of passing voices. I could still hear faint music, which was coming from the Balcony across the street, so I took a few pictures in that direction. A few more steps down the street brought me into contact with a fire hydrant; hitting it with my leg caused the chain on it to make a pleasant jingle, so I grabbed around until I found the chain and took a picture of it. About two feet away was a phone booth that I also ran into, so after feeling around on its surface and snapping another picture, I decided the journey was over.
The entire trip took about 45 minutes, at the very least. Julia told me that a lot of people would watch me as they walked by, smiling, but I never heard them say anything, and they didn't seem mocking in any way. I also didn't really mind running into people as much as objects. I knew that people would be able to get out of the way and go around me, so they never crossed my mind; normally I work really hard to dodge traffic and keep out of people's way, so the change seemed notable to me.
Definitely would be up for doing it again. Good times.
EDIT: Resized the photos to more reasonable dimensions; sorry about not doing so initially.
Thanks, Camera

More than half of my photos essentially looked like this. Thanks, camera. Thanks a lot.
Curb

The stretch of 8th St that we were on is fairly low traffic, so the curb isn't a hard edge. I had fun finding the slope with my foot.
Piehole Seating Area

The Piehole is a hysterically cheap pizza place that keeps delightfully late hours. They have seating inside and out front, and I could barely hear the couple talking.
Piehole

I could hear a lot of voices coming out the Piehole, so I aimed in that direction and hoped that I hit something.
Grape Escape

A wine bar right on the corner of 8th and Idaho, it sounded like a lot of people were outside. I was very surprised to find that there were only four, and that I actually managed to center them.
Grape Escape

Sitting on the far end of the outdoor seating area, I didn't realize that she was alone and on the phone. Wacky.
Statue

There are a few of these of varying heights out directly on the corner near Grape Escape. I'd never touched them before, and was supprised at the metallic sound they made when struck.
Statue, Balcony

On the corner opposite from Grape Escape is the Balcony, a popular bar with a typically packed dance floor.
Balcony

Taken from the the corner I started on. Place looks pretty dead tonight, but I could faintly hear the music.
Balcony, Crosswalk

The sound I heard the most of was that of passing people. I tried to get shots whenever they were audibly passing me by; most of them were lost because of my camera's unwillingness to cooperate.
Couple

Heard them chatting it up at the starting corner, prayed I could get a reasonable shot of them.