“Go sit on that bench and put your feet up, so I can take a picture of the socks,” I told Sean.  We were at the end of the Embarcadero walking path near the Morro Bay Rock.

“How about I lay down like this,” he said, stretching out on the bench and putting his hat over his face.  “And then the people walking by will think you found some homeless guy and put socks on his feet.”

“Pull your cuffs up from your ankles, so I can get a good photo,” I said, ignoring the fact that now he did look like some guy passed out on a park bench and there were people walking by and staring.

He made some noises but obliged.  It wasn’t until after I’d snapped the photo and looked at it did I realize that now I had a picture of what looked like naked hairy legs wearing nothing but knitted handmade socks.

“Not like that!” I said.  “Just pull your cuffs back down.  I’ll take another picture.”

He pulled the cuffs back down but remained in his homeless-man-passed-out-on-a-park-bench pose and I got a picture of this.

“Just– just cross one foot over the other ankle.  Like, try to make your feet look perky, or something.  I just need to get a good picture of the socks.”  I was acutely aware that the tourists who’d been looking at the sea otters were now looking curiously at me and the camera and the homeless guy on the bench.

“Thanks for being my foot model,” I said to Sean on the walk home.

“You didn’t take a picture of me passed out on the bench,” he said.  “That would have been the best.”