My Posts Are Ridiculous (Looking Ahead Back Again)

Allow me a laugh: Ha. I think my recent posts are all sharpy strained in the ridiculous because I wrote them late at night after reading post-modern lit. Crises of consciousness is no joke, remember that future me, and don't forget how affected you were (are) when I learned how empty the world thinks it is.

Today I went into the office early, feeling really good about the day. I had one class and nothing due, and just had to get through Thursday production, which happens to be the wimpiest of all production days--paling in comparison to Sunday production, which is hung like a horse. Then at the budget meeting, news tells me the centerpiece photo illustration is still a mass of ideas, and on top of that we can't get in touch with the doctor we need a portrait of. I'm always a little apprehensive about shooting doctors and professors, they don't smile well and are too dignified to make a clean, quick shoot. This particular doctor had created a kidney dialysis machine that you can walk around with, basically a portable kidney. Dharmishta also informed me that he sounds "quirky" over a phone line, and we would meet him at 3:30 on Wilshire to take his picture. It was 2:15.

Fortunately I enlisted the help of trusty Christopher Shane, an intern with a nose for good photos and trouble. Hometown: Atlanta. I made him wait ten minutes in the parking while I got my flashes together, and we're ten minutes late to the hospital. I'm getting fidgety because we're late, I really should be editing, and this doctor seems extremely busy. Fortunately he's not there when we arrive, and I get to mull over things for another 20 minutes in a waiting room. Slaughter. I try to teach Chris some of the nuances of light in the meantime, and honestly I think I did a fair job, spitting out some old lines like "the bigger a light source, the softer the light," "aperture controls flash, shutter speed controls ambient" and "bitches ain't shit." I was all up in that waiting room.

After a while the receptionist lets us into the doctor's empty office ("You didn't tell us you were photographers, we thought you were patients, come right in!" Photographers get triage-priority, it seems). We do a quick sweep of the room, decide to shoot in front of a bookshelf, and I set up the lights.




The key light had a warm gel and was the most powerful. The idea was to throw some heavy warm light onto his face, with just enough fill to not lose detail on the other side, and a backlight to diferentiate from the background. The portable kidney is really just a huge belt with a bunch of gadgets attached, so we would just have him hold it up. And we wait. And wait. At 4:40pm he comes in, tell us we should have called, should have come earlier, and calls us kids.

We turn off the lights and Chris starts shooting. I hold the flash and direct, and I can tell Chris is much more nervous. I multitask and try to chat up the doctor while giving instruction to Chris, while Chris simultaneously takes pictures and tries to chat up the doctor. We're both so absorbed in doing other things we don't listen to a word the doctor says, and in general were assholes. Fortunately he didn't need talking up, he's perfectly comfortable because he thinks we're idiots. He's also got one of the most consistent and best news-camera-smiles I've ever seen. He had a model smile! I've never seen a guy not in the modeling business keep up that good a smile for so long. He even talked through it! This guy was definitely better than us, and we all knew it, and frankly somebody had to say it.

Just kidding, only he was thinking that. I'm trying to get Chris to move around, Chris is nervous. He gets off a dozen shots before this guy puts down the vest, and "Time's up kids." He's a busy man. The pictures look good to me, but then they won't have my name attached to them so I'm less critical. Chris is less excited. In reality we didn't consider lighting the dialysis vest, and it's a black-hole piece of nylon that doesn't come out well in the pictures, but at this point I just want to get back and finish editting the wonderful file photos sure to be waiting for me back at the office.

Traffic is bad, I get back to the office at 6pm. Dharmishta's there, she's tired and so am I, on top of being frazzled by the doctor who thinks I'm a kid. We argue about how to get news to turn in requests earlier, although it turns out in hindsight we were talking the same things to each other. Afterwards I feel like a jerk for instigating, and man this is a hard day.

I'm getting tired now so I'll just gloss over redemption. After baseball photos and frantically calling photographers to get cameras to other photographers, I go to Catalyst with Sue.
It's the Prodigal son, not the way Kierkegaard tells it, but less challenging and more pleasing. I am both younger and older sons, and the rhetoric is getting ridiculous again. I'll stop. I don't need to remember today this way.

When I read other people's blogs, I'd rather read about the bad days, and I think there's something magical about spitting those words out after a trying experience. Here's hoping you feel something like that right now.