WIP.CRACKER

Goldsworthy's Spire

2009-05-28T21:29:00.001-07:00

Jackie and I were running on a trail in the Presidio a while back when we were surprised by this huge wooden spire that had appeared.

It was pretty startling, and then intriguing. Turns out it's a work by Andy Goldsworthy. I like his work, and even more so his attitude toward his work and his process.

I watched Rivers and Tides some time ago. I was most struck by a scene where Andy Goldsworthy is carefully stacking rocks. He builds them up to a certain level, but the rocks suddenly collapse into an indiscriminate pile. He hangs his head in frustration for a moment but then says "This is my work".

You can find Spire by entering the Presidio at the Arguello Gate. Make a right at the gate and follow the road down the hill. After maybe a quarter mile, you'll see on overlook on your right. Look left and you should see the spire.

It's a ways from downtown, but if you catch the 38 Geary from downtown, get off at Arguello, and walk north, up the hill, about six blocks. That'll put you at the Arguello gate. Cabbies might not know where the spire is, but they should know the gate.

If you feel like getting some golf in after, the Presidio Golf Club is a public course. Or you could head down to Clement St and get a bite to eat. Giorgio's Pizza, Burma Super Star, and the tiny sushi place that's between those two are all great places. Avoid the sushi boat place however.

Finally, it seems that Andy Goldsworthy has inspired some imitators near the spire:

Love and Hate

2009-05-18T19:57:00.001-07:00

I finished these shots quite some time ago - the red background ones are outtakes from the Resolutions project, and the blue ones were prompted by getting shoes as a Christmas gift.

I just pulled them out of my stack of work prints. I haaaaated the running shoe shots when I first finished them. I thought they were hokey and overly contrived. But I like them now. They're still kinda hokey, and I'm certainly ok with contrived, but some affection for them has appeared.

It's a strange process sometimes, the convolutions in the relationship between me and my photos. Some I love immediately, but the love fades over a couple weeks. Others I recognizes as technically great, but I hate whatever happened to the idea on it's way from my head to the paper. And there are some I have loved for a long, long time.

But in thinking about it I realize this is also true for the work of other photographers, and even movements or trends within photography. I loved the Jill Greenberg look when I first encountered it...now, not so much (although I still love the apes).

I suppose it's worth a look at what images have been extremely durable, to see what's there, what helps that to happen.

Tilt Annex

2009-04-05T21:41:00.001-07:00

Jackie and I saw a film at the Metreon recently, and wandered around there afterward. In the space that was once the Microsoft Store (I know!), and has since been a bajillion different things, there is this:

If you haven't guessed, those are all claw games. And, spookily, just claw games. It's an entire store space in the Metreon occupied by nothing but claw games.

And nothing, and no one, else. Jackie and I were the only people in there. Occasionally a machine would kick into attract mode - make some blips and flash some lights, but otherwise, it was eerily quiet.

Just a bunch of lonely stuffed animal prisons and us. This claw machine room appears to be an annex of Tilt, next door. I remember Tilt from way back, as the arcade with virtual bowling and a bar. I don't remember anything about claw machines.

Claw machines have always struck me as a bit sad; never more so when dozens of them are packed into some otherwise empty space. Until I'd watched the video linked above, I never had proof that they're rigged, but I always instinctively knew that. Jackie and I, uh, admired all the toys, but felt no interest in trying to get any.

Even the prizes are a little off - these Disney characters are monochrome.

And yes, that is a VW Bus-shaped claw machine!

Tilt and the Claw Machine Annex are in the Metreon, San Francisco's premiere kiddie mall. It's right near downtown and a bunch of hotels, so it might be worth breezing through if you have a hankering for low-grade stuffed animals. Chronicle Books has a little store on the first floor, which is a good place to spend some time, but otherwise, there's not much of interest in the Metreon.

Well, since they closed the Warhammer store. Now that was a place for social anthropology.

Shooting Nothing

2009-03-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

I worked with Art Director Adam Weisman, on a project for his portfolio. When he told me about his idea, I jumped at the chance to make some pictures about nothing. Well, space, really.

I like working with Adam a lot. He has a lot of energy, concise ideas, and he's really dedicated to faithful execution of them. We bounced some refinements off each other, and came up with a plan that included locations, props, and models. We shot these three images over two days, in the studio and on location.

It's interesting to start out talking about an idea, and to watch it to take shape as the project moves. Sometimes things that seem important early on wind up being trivial; for example, initially I thought we'd have to do the harvest shot in an orchard, because I was afraid the "harvest" idea wouldn't come through. As it turns out, it comes through fine with just a backyard lemon tree. On the other hand, we both thought from the beginning that the right props would be key, and I think that is true.

One thing learned is that it's often, counter intuitively, much faster to show someone something than it is to tell them. During shooting, when Adam would wonder what it might look like with pliers instead of solder, instead of talking about how it would look, it was much faster to rough it out and then talk about it. Similarly, we could have had a conversation about how much better the blue gloves would look than the tan gloves, or I could just switch them out. This is usually true for even large changes, like "What would this look like with completely different lighting?".

Flickr Surprise and Perhaps a New T-Shirt

2009-03-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

Re my earlier post about how Flickr doesn't have an economy, apparently it does. According to The Searcher:

"Ever come across a photo with dozens if not hundreds of comments, and they all have these little blinky "Best of Sparkly Award" graphics in them? "Diamond in the Rough!". "Flaming Sword of Awesome!!" etc etc. Well the reason for that is many people are members of Flickr groups that enforce strict "commenting" rules. To post to the group, you have to first comment on some other photos in the group, or favorite them, or give them award blinkies. It's an artificial "game" of false attention, almost all geared towards one thing: getting their photos on Explore."

I had wondered why so many mediocre photos had so many hyperbolic (and blinking) adulations in the comments.

But really I made this post to increase exposure for this awesome image.

Communications Arts Entry

2009-02-24T12:22:00.000-08:00

They say you have to spend money to make money. It's much easier to verify that first half than the second.
Here's to providence.

Pika Pika

2009-02-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

Jackie and I went to Japantown recently. Japantown's always struck me as odd - there's a weird energy there, like it's built on an indian burial ground or something. It's nothing that really sticks with you, it's just a bit off.

But it has the Hi-Tech Car Air Freshener Store, a combination weird/awesome knife store, pretty good Udon at Mifune, and a dozen other japanese stores. Oh and now that Sundance has taken over the cinema and turned it into a cocktail-dinner-movie experience, the movies have gotten better.

But it also has Pika Pika.

This entire shop is devoted to insanely complicated japanese photo booths. It's in the corner and the outside is pretty nondescript - I'd never noticed it but it's been there awhile. Walking in results in slight disorientation because of all the graphical busy-ness, jpop music, and occasional shrieks of teenage girls.

Picking a booth turns out to be rather difficult. There are about a dozen, and they're all kind of overwhelming, not least because all the instructions are in japanese. In the end, I'm not so sure it matters which one you choose...

That's right. Eight bucks. Well worth it though. You put your money in and step inside. And then you panic. There's a shrill voice telling you what to do (in Japanese) and high strung girls on video showing you how to pose...and a countdown. You try to keep up and do something interesting.

After (5? 10? 30?) minutes, you've posed four to five times, encouraged to do some pretty bizarre things. But wait, you're not done. Go around to the side of the machine where you'll find a screen with a stylus - here you can customize your pictures with as many saccharine glittery effects as your little heart desires.

You end up with something like this. If we were in Japan, you could have the machine email the pictures to your mobile phone.

It's pretty easy to get to - straight shot West on Geary from downtown ($10 cab ride, 15 minute bus ride, and there's a parking garage). All in all, it's a slightly bizarre, highly entertaining afternoon in San Francisco, especially if it's raining.

Find Pika Pika on Yelp.

Lomography Workshop

2009-02-06T21:56:00.000-08:00

Teri Cundall over at Proville put on a Lomography Workshop recently. We were given a 35mm fisheye camera (with a flash even!) and a Diana toy camera, and some film, heard some pointers, looked at some examples, and were sent off to mess around.

It was a lot of fun. So very far from my usual way of working. I haven't shot on the street in a couple years. I haven't even shot off tripod much in the last couple years.

The results are starting to show up on Flickr.

Beyond Single Objects on Plain Backgrounds

2009-02-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

Much of what I did last year is single objects on plain backgrounds and I'm trying to push beyond that, not only because it feels too narrow (I mean, there's specializing, and then there's specializing), but because I want to work with complex ideas.

How complex? Not too...I mean this is just the idea that the shoes want to go running.

But working on this image reminded me of how I got on that single-object-on-plain-backgrounds track: it's cheap. Very cheap.

It's, uh, irritating that the year when I ought to start doing tests with larger budgets is the same year the economy falls all to pieces.

I believe in a world of limits

2009-01-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

"I believe in maniacs. I believe in type As. I believe that you've got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do. I believe you must betray your mistress for your work, you betray your wife for your work; I believe that she must betray you for her work. I believe that work is the one thing in the world that never betrays you, that lasts. If I were going to be a politician, if I were going to be a scientist, I would do it every day. I wouldn't wait for Monday. I don't believe in weekends."
- Richard Avedon

I attend a group with Lisa Wiseman, and we trade inspiration. Last time I pulled this quote from Avedon as my bit. I'm not going to disparage Richard Avedon, his career and his contributions to photography, but I've had a hard time with the betrayal part of this quote. After wrestling with it for a while, I've decided that this comes from a belief in scarcity, that the essence of the world is limited, and that you must decide between work and love, between yourself and others. Otherwise, the guy's just selfish (which is possible, what with the mistress, and considering his marital history and jeez, there seems to be a lot of betrayal going on).

I'm not convinced that this is an accurate description of the world.

But whatever. I needed to figure out what to do with this quote, and I wasn't having any ideas about photographs to make of it, so I decided to act out the quote. I committed to shooting as much as I could in order to get this project out the door in a timely fashion.

I'm no Richard Avedon, I'll tell you that. I tried to betray my fiancee by leaving the dirty dishes but it doesn't take that long, so I washed them anyway. I tried to betray the dog by not going running with him, but I needed to get out too. I did manage to shoot and retouch two of these per day for a week or so.

See the entire series.

I Got into the APA Something Personal Show

2008-11-05T10:17:00.001-08:00

I'm pleased and excited to note that these two images were selected for the APA Something Personal Show.

Last year I didn't get in. I talked to Thomas Broening about that, and he asked me how many images I submitted. I told him "One." He laughed.

This year I submitted eight.

There is an opening/holiday party on December 11th.

(Complete series)

Dyson Vacuums Ad

2008-10-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

In May, I volunteered at the San Francisco Portfolio Night. Portfolio Night is an around-the-world event that matches graduating art directors with established art directors. I volunteered to help because I thought I might be able to hook up with some budding art directors who need some of their ideas photographed.

I did in fact hook up with some. Cliff Seto is the first one that I've worked with. Cliff had an idea about shooting messes as crime scenes to advertise vacuum cleaners. We pulled this production off in a couple days - Cliff was in a hurry to get his portfolio finished so he could graduate, and I was in NYC when we started talking about it. I got a friend to loan me his house, stopped by my local pet groomer to pull dog hair from their vacuum cleaner, and Cliff got a plant. Darcy Rogers via NAOPA volunteered to assist and was super helpful.

I think the three of us got these pictures to about 90%. We really needed a stylist to go all the way, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to secure one, due to the compressed timeline (and styling budget of zero).

It was easier and harder than working without an art director. On the one hand, I had to interpret what Cliff was going for; on the other, in those moments when things stopped flowing, I could look to him for some guidance. Happily, Cliff is a good communicator, and I've learned some things to help that along (eg, asking for photographic examples, offering quick sketches).

The whole thing was a good experience - I like working on other peoples ideas. Next week I'll start shooting something with another art director from Portfolio Night.

Busyness

2008-10-09T15:57:00.001-07:00

All my mid- to long-term projects seem to keep getting interrupted by booking or by weddings and birthdays. Oh and self-promotion. I've been looking at Flickr, but haven't really been able to address any of that 'new photography' stuff.

I did manage to work this out today, with a stylist named Colleen Hartman.

Not only does Flickr make you smell better, it also makes you more attractive!

2008-10-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I wrote of my five year plan and how an assessment of Flickr, among other things, might be useful.

I signed up for Flickr around that time and uploaded my portfolio. Along the way, my photostream has sucked up the Animal Model Kits project and the Capsules thing I'm working on.

I found the upload process pretty annoying, at first. There is a tremendous volume of crap (photos, comments, tags, private/public 'special icon' comments) you can associate with your photos. Figuring out which colorspace to use has been annoying, and it's clear this is not for professionals; then again, some of the stuff that IS for professionals is usually way more poorly designed and implemented (eg, DPP at first). But you get used to it, and just because it's irritating doesn't mean it's useless.

Is it just another popularity contest? And if so, am I a snob?

Over the four months I've had a couple favorites and group invitations. I get a little sense of 'oh you picked me!' but then I look at the rest of the photos in the group and meh.

But I haven't really participated. What I've done is kind of like going to a party full of photo fans, and standing against the wall clutching your photo album. Except the party is at the Superdome and there are 84743965432564356748237 people there.

I used to hang out at this website called photosig, which is like Flickr only cruddier, and with a sort of economy, in that you must critique photographs to accumulate points so you can upload your own photographs. Most of the critiques were as follows "Beutiful cat, come chrck out my photos".

The system requires users to critique 10 photos for every photo I wanted to upload. I'd just finished a project in school, with eight photos in it, so I needed to critique 80 photos. I tried to select photos without cats, and that were at least trying to be artful; I also tried to be more, uh, critical, and gently point out aspects of the photograph that I thought were working and those that were not.

This was 4-and-a-half years ago; I was still in school, didn't have much of a style, hadn't learned much about lighting, and my ideas were really important to me. Actually, they still are...I guess what I mean to say is that I was really invested in the ideas. To make matters worse, I was secretly-yet-actively trying to get someone, anyone to tell me whether or not I was a photographer.

Into this swamp I put my precious new project. The first critique came in at about the 10 minute mark, and was fair, if not completely blown away by my insightful genius as I wanted.

About 15 minutes into it, however, a critique appeared that went something like this: Why are you posting these stupid pictures this is not an art site maybe you should go to artsig. You are a terrible person and you're wasting your time and everyone else's. I hate these pictures. Also, the light falloff on the right is annoying.

I was stunned. And then angry. I went and looked at his pictures. I wish I could say that they were awesome and he was right - but they were all humdrum pictures of his kids playing sports and some mall-level portraits of the same. I couldn't understand why he was critiquing them in the first place, much less why his critique was so hateful.

In the end, I sat on it for awhile, then, using the site's guidelines for critiquing, contacted an administrator and asked her if she would delete his comment, which she did. If I had to do it again, I would have left his comment there, but at the time, I need to do something, lash out with all the emotion I was feeling about it, and dashing off an email seemed to fit the bill (I guess.).

These days, I can handle criticism. In fact, I could handle it back then. But there's criticism, and then there's jackassery. In any case, I'm kinda glad Flickr has neither an economy, nor a culture, of critiquing. It's just for sharing photos and for being popular. Or not popular.

Play vs Work

2008-09-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned play vs work before, and talked about easy vs hard as well. In the few non-booked hours I've had recently I've been working on this photo.

These are roughs, as I'm not yet done.

It's not really where I want it yet. For example, I like the highlight situation on the left, and I sort of like it on the right, but I wanted to see what it looked like with more symmetry.

And so. Now with more symmetry. And yet, it's still not where I want it to be. But it's annoying because my worktime on this picture is so fractured.

When it gets frustrating like this, the voice that often gets loudest starts going "You can't get stumped like this on a job you have to be able to perform you won't be able to step away everything will be depending on you you can't choke like this".

And that's somewhat true. But there are some significant differences. I won't be alone, and it won't all be depending on me. And I will also be different, and I know this from my own experience. That little voice is always trying to protect me in this way, but it's very short-sighted and way too skeptical.

Thankfully, another voice says "What you need is a piece of plex that's two feet longer than this, and two short C-stands to rig it in an arc above the subject." And I realize that the next opportunity I have to get to Tap, I'll get that piece of plex and finish this photo.

Portfolio Revamp

2008-08-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of a trip to NYC (tomorrow!), I've redone my portfolio, over the last two weeks.

I say I've redone it, but it was really a group effort. I'm grateful that people are willing and interesting in giving feedback, since it seems it's impossible for a photographer to judge his own work with much accuracy.

Big thanks to Jamie Kripke, Thomas Broening, James Thomas, and Lisa Wiseman. Each of them helped me out in unique, invaluable ways.

And most of them said, about the first edit, that there were too many similar images. It's made me realize that, while I like to think/work in series, that recently my series have been really narrowly focussed. While the Octopus series is pretty variable within itself, the Smoke and the Bike Trophy series are very similar.

So I removed all but the best from each series. This has left my book pretty skinny, but at this early phase, I think I'm better off showing a smaller, tighter set of images, than a repetitious one.

Add to that all the printing, cutting, scoring, case-acquiring, promo material collecting, target acquisition and location, and it's been a busy couple of weeks.

So, we'll see how it goes!

Vote for me in the PIX Digital Imaging Contest

2008-08-22T15:54:00.001-07:00

I submitted to the Personal Work section of the PIX Digital Imaging Contest.

If you can figure out how to locate my images on the contest site, that is. The link below used to get to my images, but somehow, their site moves pictures around, perhaps randomly. Thanks PDN!

Stop by and vote for me if you have a chance!

That stuff's on my portfolio site as well of course.

Animal Model Kits

2008-08-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

(Warning: dead animals and animal parts herein. I wrote before that this project might offend some people, and I'm convinced.)

I'm mainly done with this Animal Model Kits project. I've been booked a whole lot between when I started it a couple months ago and when I finished it last week.

They're specimens, if you're wondering. I got them from an online supply house, so you could get yourself a set, if you're inclined.

I worked with a stylist, Suzanne Bryan, who was great. I could see I had reached my limit in arranging the parts, so it was time to call in a professional. Suzanne did a great job styling the animal parts, and I liked collaborating some.
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It was nice to have someone else around while I was disassembling these animals. It was pretty creepy, not only cutting them open, but just having them around. But cutting them open is worse.

While prepping them, I returned to ideas I come back to periodically, about death and life and our disconnection to each. Cutting through muscle and bone, though bloodless, made me realize how infrequently I come into contact with such things, when everything is killed, cleaned, prepared cooked, sealed, packaged and delivered to me, all nice and tidy.

I thought this might have a lot to do with entitlement, not entirely, no, but partly. If I had to kill and clean a chicken, I might have a much better sense of its sacrifice, and therefore feel more grateful while I ate it. And really, that applies to food, clothes, everything. We're so disconnected from the origin of our goods it's easy to float off into some Star Trek wonderland where things just...appear.
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The project grew out of a story I read about David Lynch and his Christmas presents one year. If I remember correctly, he obtained animals like chickens and rats, disassembled, labelled, and froze them, then packaged them up, with instructions for reassembly. I thought that was pretty freaky.

Visually, I wanted to try this top-down technique; I'd seen Hunter Freeman and Dwight Eschlimann use it well.
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I'm kinda thinking about Joel Peter-Witkin, but then...naaaaaah. I think his stuff is way more disturbing...

Glorious Five Year Plan

2008-08-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Over the past five years, I've sought the advice of far more established professionals, listened to industry experts, talked with buyers and art directors, and read various magazines, websites, and blogs.

With respect to a path toward advertising photography, the general consensus I took was roughly:

Make lots of photographs
Shoot the kind of stuff you want to get paid to shoot
Develop and hone your style
Enter contests
Refine your list of potential buyers
Market to those buyers with postcards, emails, phone calls, personal visits, and whatever else you can think of
Go through editorial to get a name
When you get a job, don't screw it up too badly

This has been my general plan for a couple years, and I'm executing it as well as possible.

So.

Maybe I've been reading too much A Photo Editor, but recently I've been noticing a couple of things:

That list of items above, as a framework, has a lot more detail that needs to be filled in.
There's some possibility that the above framework might not work for me. Or for me now. Or any more at all.

From that point-of-view, I find myself wondering: are the following items opportunities or threats?

"Everybody is a photographer"

Magazine evolution/death

The long tail

Microstock

Stock

Online distribution

Online advertising

File sharing
"Free the net"
Orphan works legislation
Internet audiences and their characteristics
Increasing work-for-hire arrangements
Licensing arrangement degradation
Intellectual property ignorance
Social networking sites
Blogging
Diversification
Specialization
IM
Texting
The Economy
China

All I know at the moment is that I can't truly predict the future status of any of these items, but I can gather data and try to establish a productive attitude toward all of them.

How to Be A Photographer

2008-08-07T08:45:00.001-07:00

I booked some long assisting projects recently and haven't been able to work on my own stuff. When those long projects ended, I found myself frustrated and irritable, and feeling like an imposter photographer.

I thought to myself, "I need to get inspired, get motivated, get to the point where I feel like a photographer, so I can make some pictures."

And you know, I can do all the little things that I find inspiring:

walking around downtown
looking at work from photographers that are around my level
listening to albums from artists I admire
reading
looking at stuff

but I'm beginning to see that this stuff usually has no immediate effect.

Then: I don't get to make photographs when I feel like a photographer, I get to feel like a photographer when I make photographs.

Which is what more advanced photographers have been telling me all along: keep making pictures.

Anybody Else?

2008-08-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Photographer/Designer/Ad Agency,

Do you know how big my monitor is? I think you don't, since, when I access your website, you expand my browser window to full screen, leaving this little tiny content area surrounded by a vast field of grey/black/white.

I wish, if you're going to presume to take over my browser that way, that you'd be more accurate about it. For future reference, you have 1920x1200 pixels to work with. Your content usually occupies about a third of that.

Thanks!

Self-promotion Heart Attack

2008-07-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

I just hit the button on my first email promotion. As I rolled up to that, my heart was pounding, my palms were sweating, my whole body felt light and there was a buzzing in my head.

Maybe, just maybe it was that third cup of coffee this morning.

More likely, it was terror. I checked the thing 39486120463476 times, but there could still be some atrocious mistake. I sent it to seven of my peers, but it could still somehow have some totally inappropriate career-ending aspect to it that nobody saw. Everybody uses email as a self-promotion tool now and it's totally valid but I have been getting spam for over a decade and I know how annoying it is.

And now, five minutes after the heart-stopping eternity of watching the "processing" message proceed, my body remains light but my heartbeat has returned to normal, and I just had a fit of relieved laughing.

Wait! There's a reply! Already! It must be a portofolio call-in, or some kind of positive feedback, or a scathing flame...oh, no, it's just an out-of-office message.

Sitting on the other side of it now, I realize that, whenever some promotional email is annoying me, that I never give any thought to the sender. I realize now that, in my head, they just click a button and send 3048693748612374632 emails, then go back to watching TV. My experience is nothing like that, so maybe theirs isn't either.

Sympathy for the devil.

2008-06-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Timothy Archibald writes a brief paragraph on "getting it" and it makes me think all morning. About why I make photographs. About what they mean. About what my photographs say about me. And whether I want people to know.

Which is not really the best state from which to make new photographs, but it's ok for editing.

Today is a day for making photographs, however. And I do wonder, during the creation phase, "What does this photograph (or series of photographs) mean?". It's not usually very productive. Photography is not helped so much by thinking about meaning. It's better aided by looking. So at best I keep on, shelve the interrogation for the time being, keep looking and seeing. At worst I degenerate into some Rivers Cuomo level paralysis of self-reflection for a bit.

This current project promises to be rather sick, and possibly offensive, which is fine, provided there's some point to all that, some reason for crossing the line. Right now I can't see the reason but I'm hoping it will become evident. My little brain always wants to know beforehand but my finicky mistress is always coy.

Bullish on Smoke

2008-05-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Although I guess Goatish is more like it. I like goats. There's something simultaneously creepy and alluring about them for me. They stand there, munching, staring at me with their devil eyes, and I am curious to know what's going on in their goat heads.

These smoke pictures are getting there, ever-so-slowly. I have a direction now, which is nice. I don't know how to output them though. Online at a manageable size, they don't look great. Printed they don't look great. Maybe I'll have to get all Jeff Wall on them.

It's strangely exciting, messing around with shooting the smoke. I can kind of encourage it in a certain direction, but really it does what it wants. Kind of like goats.

Mythology

2008-04-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

Remember this: if you are a photographer, you are always busy, and you never fuck up.

I know plenty of people who are willing to tell the truth about how much they've been working, or tell stories of their scrub moves. I know a few people who are actually busy all the time, and they're all willing to relate tales of ignominy.

But at gatherings it's always "ohgodI'vebeensobusyneveradullmomenthahaha". When people ask me, and I say something like, "Nope...been pretty slow...did a test...when was that? last week...", they edge away, as if it's contagious.

What's the upside of these myths? I guess if you repeat something often enough, it'll come true, maybe? There's something to that, but I don't think it works by lying to everyone all the time. I know the downside, for sure: it makes me think: "Man, everybody's busy but me, what the hell?", and yet I'm skeptical, so it's like being surrounded by a bunch of people in Superman costumes.

Anyways. I dropped an Octobank on a rental car! Which rental car was meant to be in the shot!

We were on a hill in Pacific Heights. It was fairly windy. The photographer liked to use an Octobank, 12-15' up, on a high roller. We set everything up, positioned the car, were starting to work with the subject. I turned away, but heard the photographer shouting, "Light, light, light, light, light, light...", so I looked around, wondering what he was going on about. The high roller had a sickening kind of list to it, like something over at the Mystery Spot, and I watched as the Octobank seemed to float down to the ground.

No, not the ground. The hood of the rented Mini Cooper. In the last 12 inches, it accelerated huge and crashed into the hood. I looked at the photographer. He turned on his heel and walked away. I ran over and started clearing up the mess, thinking "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...".

I go things re-situated but there was a twelve inch gash on the hood of the car. The photographer came back.

He asked, "Is there sand in the truck?".
I nodded.
He said, "All sandbags need to be on the lightstand."
I nodded some more.
"You will stand on the lightstand until we're done."
I nodded.

Later I offered to pay the damages on the hood, but he would have none of it. I apologized profusely and he wouldn't have much of that either.

I've been extremely fortunate to work with forgiving, generous photographers, who took chances with me, and suffered for it, and yet continued to push me along, help me, and even hire me.

And the thing about these myths, is that if we're all these Supermen and women, then there's no need for forgiveness, for humility, for tolerance, for help, for breathing or growing or living up.