The Cat Who Walks by Himself -- finally is walking.

A selection from my ongoing portfolio of straight-ahead street photographs is now up! This one was taken at a "clothing exchange" at Seattle's Gasworks Park. The young man in the foreground was trying out a bustier for which he clearly did not have the resources to adequately fill.

Street photography is getting harder and harder to do. I am falling back to using my Rolleiflex twin lens camera for street photography -- it is slow and clumsy to use but people tend to look at it as such an antique that it's not a threat -- or don't even recognize it as a camera.

What really drives me nuts it the PWC (people with cellphones) snapping away unnoticed -- if I had any inclination to paparazzi (or worse) use for my photographs a cellphone would be my weapon of choice.

Wah Lui (local, very accomplished portrait photographer) was asked why his portraits look so "posed". He replied that it was difficult to sneak up on anybody with a 4x5 camera on a tripod. That's kind of how it is nowadays -- it's difficult to be unobtrusive with a camera of any size.

I spent three days of the four-day Folklife Festival this year. The music was terrific, the weather was perfect, the photographing was spectacular.

August's Print of the Month (or thereabouts) is from a performance by the Zambuko Marimba Ensemble at the Fountain Lawn Stage on Saturday. I had heard them the previous year and made a point to be there.

They play music based on the music of Zimbabwe and Kenya -- with skill and energy -- and have such a good time doing it. The crowd knows a good thing when they hear it and respond in kind. I also have several candidates for my "Ecstatic Dancers" portfolio.