“To him, L.A.’s worth a thousand pictures”
Schall crouched down, pulling a special green notebook out of the pockets of his khaki jeans. He noted the building’s location, the words on the sign, and drew a rough map of the corner. It was enough information to go on.
He replaced the pen in the notebook’s spine and stood up.
“Maybe we should make a picture now?” he asked in a sing-song voice, light with his German accent, and walked across the street to a position kittycorner from the building.
There, Schall waited patiently for the golden moment that he says comes every 15 minutes or so: an instant when even along a busy street the building can be photographed without cars or buses in the way.
It is a moment worth waiting for, he said, when the building can show itself off in proper splendor. “If you do it, you show some respect. You show you are not in a rush. It’s some respect for the building, I think.”