Night Photography by the Lake

While walking in the grass last night near the Lakeview Library in Oakland, the REM song, "Night Swimming" came into mind, especially the first verse.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, its so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the waters edge.
The moon is low tonight.


As I do with many songs, I tried to change a few words to make the lyrics match my current activity. One would never go swimming in Lake Merritt as it is pretty gross with pollution and bird crap. We were carrying our cameras and I played around with the words "Night shooting, deserves a quiet night." Although all we were doing was taking photographs, the reality of gun violence is too great here. In fact, after we got home last night, we were watching some KQED short videos and we thought that we had heard a gun shot somewhere in the neighborhood. With that event so fresh in my mind, I could not bring myself to title my post with such a saddening pun.

So where are the pictures that we took at night? Where are the streetlights? Where is the water's edge?

Well, happily and unfortunately, I'm currently in the middle of a reinstall of windows on my computer. My computer is now lightning fast with turning on and shutting down. But, I haven't installed any of the photo processing software and since I haven't learned macbook language yet, I can't use Grant's computer. You'll have to wait a few days to see my pictures from the evening, but for now you can feast on the photos taken by our very talented friend Jane. And if you want to see more of her work, check out her webpage: Kilmer Photography.