After attending another Zombie Walk in Asbury Park, I decided to head back to the town made famous by The Boss. I’ve been making photographs of murals lately and Asbury Park has its share. So this past week I drove back. The seventy mile trip takes about an hour and half.

The sun was shining when I pulled into my parking space not far from the boardwalk. Getting out of the car I immediately noticed something I wanted to make a picture of. I opened my camera bag grabbed my camera. And then I looked again. Oh $@%#^$!  I left my light meter home in another camera back #!@$%^(*&^%!!

I’ve never left my meter home. My first thought was put the camera back in its bag and head back. But then I thought I’m not going to do a three hour round trip and come back empty handed!  What to do?  All of a sudden I thought of the so called Sunny 16 Rule that states on a nice day you can set your lens aperture on f/16 and your shutter speed at the inverse of your film box speed. I guess we were about to find out if it was really true about all that Tri-X latitude! With the shutter speed set at 1/500^th of a second, a close enough match to ASA 400, I set out to find some murals.

Would my trip to Asbury Park turn out to be a bust or have a sunny outcome? After a long stroll along the board walk and a number of photos of the murals made I saw what looked like a bridal party in the distance!  My pace quickened until a caught up with the happy couple being photographed against some of the murals by their wedding photographer. Great … I had a camera too! Needless to say I hung out with them for a while.  Good thing I had my Leica … small unobtrusive and quiet!  If the exposures of the murals and the bride and groom were remotely accurate there may be a keeper or two.

But wait, there was more!  As the wedding party finally walked away and I was ready to head back to my car, I spotted yet another man and wife to be with their photographer!!  Needless to say more photographs for me!

I talked to my two kids about my experience that day. Both said pretty much the same thing. According to my son my bridal stalking was semi creepy … my daughter said it was creepy.  Millennials … what can I say? Hey, no one shooed me away, and one of the grooms even waved at me!

Yesterday I developed my Tri-X filled with murals and young love and the negatives didn’t look all that bad.  There may well be a sunny outcome after all to my meterless outing!

Stay well,

Michael