Sunday, July 13, 2008
Road Trip To Urbana
I had some photos in a gallery show in Urbana, IL so Maddie and I drove up for the opening today. We are currently watching olympic trials, eating doughnuts and sourpatch kids in our hotel room, and singing "Unstoppable" by Santogold over and over and over and over.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Excuse me, Ms. Kidman?
After leaving my full time job as a photographer for The Nashville City Paper a little over four months ago, I have had a fair amount of freelance assignments that I expected and hoped for. Shooting stories for The New York Times, a story about Ft. Campbell for The AP, Obama campaign events for Reuters, etc. Also the assignments that simply pay the bills but are none the less fun to shoot; bands, PR stuff, campaign materials, even a couple of weddings coming up. But one thing I never really anticipated, but does makes sense living in Nashville, is paparazzi work. Yep. Paparazzi. The evil P.
I was finishing up a job for a local campaign on monday when i got a call from an Australian newspaper wanting to hire me for the day to stake out the hospital where Nicole Kidman was supposedly having her baby. Normally, I am completely anti-paparazzi, their typical lack of ethics, and blood thirsty style of shooting. After talking with the writer and getting the feeling that she wasn't wanting me to sneak in a window or disguise myself as a nurse for the shot, I felt like it was an ok job to take, not to mention, it paid very well. We were just going to hang outside of the hospital with a long lens, and if we saw anything, I was going to shoot it. No ambushing or confrontation. Still, I felt pretty bad about doing the job, but really needed the money.
I met up with the writer at the hospital and we walked a few laps around the place to see if we could figure out the most likely exits and entrances. Once we decided on the front entrance after seeing the local AP photog there too, we set up camp. And by set up camp, I mean, I put my camera in a backpack to conceal it, and we sat down on a bus bench..........for 6 hours.
I just sat on the bench and waited.
We sat on the bus bench for 6 hours watching the front door of the hospital. Luckily it was mostly a nice day, except for about 45 minutes when it rained. During the time sitting there, more photographers started to show up; British Paparazzi from an agency called Splash, some local guy who we never met, a HUGE satellite truck, a tv station from LA, and ultimately the guy who took over my "shift", Jeff from LA. The Australian paper, with the NY corespondent who they flew to Nashville, had called in their regular stringer and flew him in from LA. Crazy. There just seemed to be so much disposable income for this type of thing. I was offered more money on the spot to stick around for a couple of extra hours. Which, all that meant, was sit on the bench for an additional 2 hours. I am pretty used to large, very reputable newspapers and news agencies asking me to work for cheap and keep costs down as much as I can, and ultimately paying me very little. Here, I felt like I could have bought a BMW if I could have explained that it would have provided better cover than the bus bench.
After a total of 8 hours of stake out, nothing happened. Nothing. I got paid all the same.
Now I just have to wash the feeling of being a paparazzi off.
I was finishing up a job for a local campaign on monday when i got a call from an Australian newspaper wanting to hire me for the day to stake out the hospital where Nicole Kidman was supposedly having her baby. Normally, I am completely anti-paparazzi, their typical lack of ethics, and blood thirsty style of shooting. After talking with the writer and getting the feeling that she wasn't wanting me to sneak in a window or disguise myself as a nurse for the shot, I felt like it was an ok job to take, not to mention, it paid very well. We were just going to hang outside of the hospital with a long lens, and if we saw anything, I was going to shoot it. No ambushing or confrontation. Still, I felt pretty bad about doing the job, but really needed the money.
I met up with the writer at the hospital and we walked a few laps around the place to see if we could figure out the most likely exits and entrances. Once we decided on the front entrance after seeing the local AP photog there too, we set up camp. And by set up camp, I mean, I put my camera in a backpack to conceal it, and we sat down on a bus bench..........for 6 hours.
I just sat on the bench and waited.
We sat on the bus bench for 6 hours watching the front door of the hospital. Luckily it was mostly a nice day, except for about 45 minutes when it rained. During the time sitting there, more photographers started to show up; British Paparazzi from an agency called Splash, some local guy who we never met, a HUGE satellite truck, a tv station from LA, and ultimately the guy who took over my "shift", Jeff from LA. The Australian paper, with the NY corespondent who they flew to Nashville, had called in their regular stringer and flew him in from LA. Crazy. There just seemed to be so much disposable income for this type of thing. I was offered more money on the spot to stick around for a couple of extra hours. Which, all that meant, was sit on the bench for an additional 2 hours. I am pretty used to large, very reputable newspapers and news agencies asking me to work for cheap and keep costs down as much as I can, and ultimately paying me very little. Here, I felt like I could have bought a BMW if I could have explained that it would have provided better cover than the bus bench.
After a total of 8 hours of stake out, nothing happened. Nothing. I got paid all the same.
Now I just have to wash the feeling of being a paparazzi off.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Chicago
I came up to Chicago to visit Marshall at Columbia. She's up here for a little over a month. We went to the beach and the fourth was full of fireworks.
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