San Francisco, California
I met Xuanle approximately two years ago while at the Mechanical Engineering Machine Shop at UC Berkeley. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing there, but it all happened fairly quickly. She was asking the mentors there if there were any research opportunities available for her as she was an international student from Singapore. They unfortunately didn’t but I couldn’t help but overhear, I turned around, and offered her to work with my lab, Radwatch/Dosenet, across the building on the Nuclear Engineering side of Etcheverry Hall. From there, we became fairly good friends and even went on a hike through Grizzly Peak in the middle of the night. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea but it was too late to turn around when the sun began to set.
I didn’t consider myself a photographer at the time, at least no more than the scope of my teaching assistant job entailed at the time. Xuanle brought her camera along and even to this day, I credit her as the beginning of my photography journey. She took quite a few photos of me as we hiked, but she also asked me to take some of her with her camera, I had no idea how but she just told me to just point and shoot and I hoped for the best:
From then on and even now, I spam the shutter button in hopes of capturing the perfect shot. I know it’s commonly looked down upon as it’s seen as wasteful amongst photographers, but it’s allowed me to capture moments I never would’ve been able to catch with my own eyes. It’s those glimmers of gold in a pile of sand that strike as a jackpot to me, even if it took one hundred photos to get that one perfect shot, it would’ve been well worth it. The “prodigal” photo has been found.
Even after she returned to Singapore, we kept in touch every so often and sent each other letters and post cards. She travels somewhere new every few months it seems, I’m not sure where she finds the courage to venture head-first into uncharted territories, but she manages well it appears. To be honest, it’s quite inspiring. She brings her camera where ever she goes and has taken some amazing photos on her adventures. Amongst the best are her street photos that she takes of strangers. She may not believe it, but I am very jealous of her animated personality and openness to talk to strangers. I’m working on that courage myself, but believe me when I say that she is truly my inspiration.
Recently, she had a layover at SFO for eight hours, and abruptly asked if I had time for an impromptu meetup. After two years of joking that she’d never come back, I’d never have thought that Saturday morning would be my opportunity to finally meet her again after so long. My chance to demonstrate my newfound photography skills has arrived! I quickly seized my camera, and headed out to San Francisco to greet her.
I found her at Ghirardelli Square after circling the block for a good ten minutes. It’s hard to spot someone as tiny as she is (not sorry mwahaha), but as usual, we didn’t have a plan after we met up, but I knew for certain that I wanted to take photos with her. We either could’ve went to the Golden Gate Park, or perhaps even the Golden Gate Bridge. I recently saw some posts on Instagram of the Golden Gate Bridge that I wanted to recreate, so we ended up going there… and of course she’s been there already :’) No matter, we both had cameras and sometimes life isn’t about where you are, it’s about who you’re with.
We parked a ways east of the bridge and made our way over, and along the way, any location that could’ve made a good photo was made into an amazing one. We passed by a kids park where I thought she totally could’ve infiltrated the swings with the other kids and none would be the more observant to her presence. I didn’t realize there were parts of San Francisco that was still fairly lively, I’ve only heard that the entirety of the city was crumbling to drugs and crime, but there still seems to still be some vestiges of the good old days here and there.
We made our way along the beach where we noticed a cute couple and took their photo but was too shy to approach them. She dragged me behind them, trying her best to help me speak up. We even followed behind them for a few minutes… in retrospect I could’ve said something, I’ve disappointed myself, but more importantly, I may have disappointed her as well. Regardless, I know she meant well for me, I promised her that if I took anymore cute photos of couples with my camera, I would show them (future Ben here, I assure you that I have maintained this promise even when I was abroad in Taiwan and Korea).
As we continued, nothing escaped our focus, even a collapsed pier was photoworthy… and scalable because Xuanle made me climb over crumbling logs and fierce waves just for a few photos despite my hear of heights (to be fair, I did feel a little better that she went first. If she could do it, so can I, but she’s also an expert climber and was in the Singaporean military for some reason…so… yeah). It took me a good five minutes just to climb about 10 yards over the water, but after feeling the relief of climbing back onto land, I’m certainly a little more confident than I was before.
We climbed stairs, traversed under tunnels, she climbed some trees, eventually we were able to make our way to the Golden Gate Bridge. We talked about life, what she wanted to do in the future. It must’ve been tiring for her to speak in English for so long though because she eventually started using Chinese to communicate which I’m not very good at. It sounded like she’s an adventurous soul though and wishes to perhaps move to the Bay Area some day and travel the world.
Unfortunately, Xuanle needed to be dropped off at the airport by 7PM, so we could only walk a little ways before having to turn back. Even though we couldn’t walk across the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, we made the most out of what we could and I believe the photos turned out incredibly well. I sent her to the airport, and she made her way towards the east coast to her new internship.
If there was something to learn from the shoot, more than the photography experience we gained, was that the greatest of friends push each other to be their best. Would I have ever become a photographer had I not turned around that afternoon in the machine shop? I had my dad’s old Nikon D80 for my first job at that time, but I definitely wouldn’t have become as outgoing as I am on my own. I had my friends, I had Xuanle and her boundless enthusiasm, and it is that joy and companionship she brings that elevates our photos to new heights.
If you haven’t already scrolled all the way to the latter half of the Instagram carousel, the photos Xuanle took of me are overlaid onto a darker background!
