I'd Rather Cover The War Than Shoot A Wedding

In my very first post to this blog I mentioned that, "I don't shoot weddings... actually, I did, once, my very first professional job, I'll never do it again!! (I'll tell the story later, promise)" Today, I have the perfect opportunity to spin that tale.

On the ASMPproAdvice forum we'd been discussing the effect the Flickr crowd has had on the sourcing of professional imagery for advertising. Somehow, I'm not certain how but somehow, one of my correspondents took something I said as being a slight against wedding photographers. Not so, but it was a good opportunity to reflect on why I have the utmost respect for practitioners of the matrimonial arts... and by posting that bit here as well, the opportunity to fulfill my promise to tell the story.

One of the forum regulars wrote: "While I am not defending what is happening and I realize your comment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek (as some of mine are), these MWAC are hurting the professional portrait/wedding shooters that share similar skills and resources as the rest of us 'photographers.' I know there is an attitude or at least was, amongst some commercial photogs that they look down upon the portrait/wedding shooters but that there are some that do recognize there is a necessary skill to deal with 'ALL THOSE PEOPLE.'"


My response.....

I don't know where you got the idea that I look down my nose at wedding photographers, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. The fact is that I have the utmost respect for wedding photographers, and for a number of reasons.

Those who are really good at shooting weddings are very successful and make a ton of money, who could look down their nose at that?

Personally, I don't shoot weddings because I'm not going to see my wedding-shooting friends from just about now through the end of October. If they've managed to save out the odd weekend here or there they're going to be spending that time with their families, not me and mine. Also, I have an aversion to working at parties. Let's not neglect to mention that there's always some distant relative with a camera who will shoot the wedding for next to nothing just for the invitation, (I guess they're the subjects of your angst) and I'm not into that kind of competition (the Flickr crowd??).

AND, I'm really not into having to educate 100 per cent of my customer base, I prefer to deal with professional photo buyers... though there's some debate about the professionalism of the pro set these days as well, but most are cool.

The most important reason I don't shoot weddings is that it makes me very nervous. You see, one of the very first paid shoots I ever did was a wedding... it was a nerve-wracking experience I don't ever want to duplicate.

I was a fifteen year-old kid who pumped gasoline in a service station (remember those?) to feed a photography habit. The night manager was a neighbor, and the father of one of my best friends, who lived across the back yard and thought I was a great photographer, for a kid, so he offered me $100 to shoot his oldest daughter's wedding. Hey, a hundred bucks? You bet! (In 1968, $100 was real money!)

I took my Pentax H3v, my (only) 55mm lens, and a roll of Ektacolor Professional (36 exposures) and proceeded to shoot the wedding. I was blissfully doing my thing for what seemed like the longest time when it occurred to me that 'I must've taken more than 36 pictures by now'..... the film leader failed to catch and I was, essentially, shooting with an unloaded camera. I hadn't ever (previously) thought to check the rewind knob for tension as a sign that the film was loaded properly. Luckily... LUCKILY!... I was able to re-shoot all the pictures I could remember taking to that point and got it all worked-out, but I was sweating bullets!! The bride, groom, and the rest of the wedding party never figured-out what was happening and when it was all over (and they loved the pictures!!!) I swore-off wedding photography altogether.

The next time I considered shooting a wedding it was my turn at the altar and my (now ex-) wife threatened not to marry me if I went through with my plan to shoot my own wedding. Instead, I hired one of the best wedding guys in the Chicago area, Russ Berckman, who did a fabulous job but he must have been in a sweat himself as he came to the realization that damned near every one of the guests was a professional photographer of one sort or another. Talk about a tough crowd. Jeeez!

I don't screw-up on the job, but I definitely prefer to shoot jobs where re-shoots are possible. There are no re-shoots when you do weddings. You blow a wedding shoot, there's no recovery. It's simply not my cup of tea.

I'll leave it to others to look down on wedding photographers. I'd rather cover the war in Iraq than shoot a wedding.

It's Raining, It's Pouring, It's Imus In The Morning!!

Quite surprised to see that MSNBC has cancelled its television simulcast of Imus In The Morning. Whether one applauds, or is repulsed by, Don Imus and the remarks he made about the Rutgers University Womens Basketball Team, let's face it... Don Imus has been making scandalous remarks about anyone and everyone for the past thirty years. That's what NBC originally hired him to do, I'm suprised that they've now cancelled his show. Why didn't NBC cancel Imus In The Morning in 1975?

I recall first listening to Imus In The Morning on "WNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnBC" (AM) during my morning commute to my first job after college in the spring of 1975. He was outrageous then, he's outrageous now, I don't see anything but consistency in his broadcasts since day one. That NBC fails to stand behind him now is an outrage. What ever happened to free speech?

Don Imus is a commedian and a satirist and nothing's changed in all these years, except the strength of NBC's spine.

War Stories: A Tripod's Tale

If I'm out on a paid shoot I'll be toting three tripods in a case, along with a mini-tripod that fits in my backpack, but when I'm on a personal vacation (still shooting) I'll travel considerably lighter... one body, a few lenses, a few flash cards (all in a day pack) and a tripod.

Among my collection of pods I have a Tiltall that I used once in about two feet of salt water on a beach in Washington in 1992, the legs are still a little sticky, and I took it on vacation with me a year ago when my family and I flew down to Mexico for a week. Needless to say(?), I left the mini at home.

Took the vacation on frequent-flier miles so it was one of those where we had to change planes rather than fly non-stop. The plan was EWR to DFW to CUN but the airline overbooked the flight, it was Christmas day, we arrived one hour before departure instead of two and missed it by that much (as Maxwell Smart used to say) and ended-up having everything changed.

US Airways paid for our taxi to Philadelphia and we flew from there to DFW to Cancun. There was some kind of sick-out in Philly that day so everything was really screwed-up as they cobbled together a crew for our flight. We were only about six hours behind schedule but luckily the boys amused themselves with the pay phones in the nearly empty terminal (most passengers in Philadelphia that day never made it past the ticket counter, there was a riot out there, maybe you saw it on the news?) and came away with a few pockets full of coins, but I digress. Anyway, we made it to Mexico okay, just late, and had a great week on the beach in Akumal... and looked forward to a normal flying day on the return trip.

Right.

The return flights, even though we arrived at the airport in plenty of time, saw us flying the exact reverse route, except that we flew from Philadelphia back to Newark (CUN > DFW > PHL > EWR) and... post-9/11/01... went through security again at each stop. I'm carrying my salt-water Tiltall on each flight with no problem and when we change planes in Philadelphia on the last leg of a seven flight journey, the TSA Supervisor tells me (post-X-ray) I can't take the tripod on the plane, I'll have to check it, claimed it was a "blunt instrument."

Every photographer knows that if you check your tripod, even a salt-water damaged tripod with sticky legs, you're gonna lose it. I tried to make that clear to the Supervisor and we had a few (ultimately-heated) words about it whereby I offered to demonstrate his worst fears blunt instrument-wise ;-) but the upshot of our discussion was that I either, "check it or forfeit it." And to check the tripod I had to go to the ticket counter which is at Terminal A..... but we were at Terminal C!

Downstairs to the bus, bus to Terminal A, arrive at the ticket counter to the l_o_n_g_e_s_t l_i_n_e I've ever seen and thinking I'm gonna miss my plane yet again I decided to end-run the first TSA guy by attempting to go through security there. Mr. Nonchalant (that's me!) arrives at the check-point and puts the backpack, jacket and tripod on the X-ray belt, it goes through the machine, the Terminal A guard looks at me and asks, "Tripod, eh? You a professional?"

"Yeah," I replied without even a trace of a hint of my previous angst, "but I'm on vacation today, travelling light."

"Have a good flight," he said.

"Thanks," I said, and I tucked the tripod under my arm and kept on truckin.

Think Big!!

A friend has asked me for a panoramic print of the NYC skyline for his office... something to fill a space about eight feet wide behind his desk. I'm thinking this is it. What do you think?