norma is my mother’s neighbor. she walked by while i was setting up in the alley to film my brother and his wife on father’s day. many people who walk by photo sets jokingly say “hey, you gonna take my picture, too?” i always answer yes to this question, and find that when you actually do it they become much less brave. i think the photo above is norma’s feeling on the picture-taking process. i can’t say i blame her. actually, these days, that expression sums up quite a bit for me.

the latest shot recession special: two CEOs in a row, now that these have both finally gone to press.

jay flaherty is CEO of HCPI which, as far as i understand it, invests in real estate. you’d think that’d be a recipe for disaster right about now but jay didn’t seem too concerned. they build medical offices and hospitals, and if those vultures at anthem blue cross are indicative of the industry as a whole they’ve got plenty of money to buy buildings.

hell, i think i’ve financed a building for blue cross all on my own. those crooks raised my health insurance rates twice in one year, to mind boggling levels and are constantly up to dirty tricks in an attempt to boot me off to the ranks of the uninsurable. this guy is pissed off enough, and he’s paying only a quarter of what i’m paying. let’s hope obama can do something about the asinine pre-existing condition laws, but i’m not holding my breath. a couple weeks ago i actually had a health insurance agent suggest i marry a government employee. that’s my only option?

anyway, jay seems to think that the health care real estate game is fairly stable. i guess people always get sick, no matter how bad the economy is.

good luck to us all.

when kenny maestas was in his early twenties he was riding shotgun in a truck driven by a buddy of his. this buddy was agitated. he had just had a fight with his girlfriend. kenny was only trying to get a ride to work, but his buddy was driving erratically. the truck crashed. the friend walked away, mostly uninjured. kenny wasn’t so lucky. he was paralyzed, a quadriplegic. he can move his arms somewhat, enough to grip a pencil, and drive his (highly modified) van, where he controls the gas and brake with levers coming off the steering wheel.

now kenny manages the walmart in the small town of la junta, colorado. he works sixteen, seventeen hour days sometimes. he’s married and supports his wife and kid. he takes tremendous pride in being able to manage the store, and it’s a big operation, with several hundred people to oversee. wheeling around his house he points out things, saying “that’s from walmart.” and “that too, got that at walmart”. he remains remarkably calm when talking to his hyperactive two year old son, kristopher. kristopher begrudgingly sits for a couple pictures, mostly making silly faces and sticking his tongue out at his mom. like most shoots involving kids, kristopher’s parents obtain his minimal cooperation by promising to get him a toy at walmart when we’re done. “he’s a walmart baby”, says kenny.

when kristopher gets too rowdy cpl. bennett attempts to calm him down by playing with giant squirt guns. when paul sits kristopher down and starts teaching him how to disassemble an automatic weapon i have to stop and ask kenny “is this okay?” kristopher seems riveted. at least he stays quiet for a few minutes. thanks paul, for corrupting one more kid.

maggie produced the shoot, and she’s worth her weight in just about anything in the world. she also provided me with an opportunity to watch someone actually get out of getting a speeding ticket. i’m still not sure how she did it. it didn’t even seem like she was trying. i’m pretty sure hypnosis was involved.

everything was smooth except for the fact that we had the misfortune of being on US airways. never again. just before we left i noticed US airways was #1 on some list of the worst airlines to fly. they’ve started charging for everything. no beverage service. no free checked bags. paul and i spent a lot of time juggling things around to get all our bags under the 50 lb weight limit. we bought a 5-pack of t-shirts at kenny’s walmart and wrapped lenses in them. i had to trick them into checking a bag at the gate (which was free). i did this three times.

we raced to make the last flight out of colorado springs after the shoot, but our plane was coming from denver and apparently US airways can’t fly in the rain at all. things were delayed. then delayed further. it got to a point where we had no chance of making our connecting flight, but we opted anyway to go to phoenix for the night, just to get a little closer to home. however once in flight it seems there were thunderstorms in phoenix and we were rerouted to flagstaff. i mean, really, since when does it rain in phoenix in august? in flagstaff we sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours.

the flagstaff airport had already closed for the night and since there were no TSA agents there they couldn’t let anyone off the plane. this became problematic when people in the back of the plane started having trouble with the bathroom. there was no water in it, no soap, and the flush wasn’t working. the poor harried flight attendant tried to help a little bit by putting his own personal travel size bottle of purell in the bathroom, but it was an uphill battle. a girl sitting in the back of the plane threw up from the smell of the bathroom, and they let her sit on the steps of the plane. they wouldn’t let her down to the tarmac or let her use a bathroom inside the terminal. she was on her way to vegas to get married.

at one point the flight attendant was actually reading the employee manual to figure out what to do, and i even saw the pilots looking at a map trying to figure out where to go. luckily we were in the front of the plane so we got some air from the open door and the bathroom didn’t affect us.

the flight attendant kept getting on the PA and half-heartedly saying “we apologize for the inconvenience.”

as pissed as we were at the airline, i couldn’t help but think of kenny. i couldn’t help but think of kenny lying in the hospital after being in a car crash he had no responsibility for, and probably felt he shouldn’t even have been anywhere near. i thought of his buddy just walking away. i thought of how kenny told me that the first few years after the accident “drinking helped”. i wondered if anyone had apologized to kenny for the inconvenience he has to live with every single day of his life, just because of circumstance. just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

i guess the moral of the story, like most morals, is to try your damnedest not to take little things for granted. that, and don’t fly US airways.

still, there’s one blog that i keep coming back to consistently. i know it’s probably bad form to spend time here tooting the horn of another photographer, but in this case i really can’t help it. jonathan saunders’ blog, i like to tell stories, is everything i wish all the other photo blogs could be. ballsy, personal, touching, sometimes random, insightful. . . so for the very few people who look at my site, do yourself a favor and give some time to jonathan saunders as well. i was inspired first to write something about a post jonathan did last week, but then i had some server trouble over the weekend and things got delayed. i’m forced to write about it here because jonathan’s blog doesn’t accept comments. that’s because it’s not for you. it’s for him. which is part of what makes it so great.

all of us who work editorially can very easily get caught up in the format and style of the work we do that supports us. jonathan saunders reminds me that i should constantly be taking pictures for no reason at all, and not lose sight of the fact that we all do this job because it’s so wonderful to make pictures in the first place.

anyway, the post i was initially going to comment on was this, about the endless trap of promotional mailers. all photographers do them, though i still find that most photo editors and art directors don’t really care too much. jonathan speculates that over the past decade or so he’s sent out 41 different postcards at a cost of approximately $19,000 to not much effect. now those in marketing will say that each individual postcard doesn’t matter too much, that name recognition is cumulative and builds up over time. i certainly hope this is true. every time i send out a postcard or a mailer of some kind i have the vague (or not so vague) feeling that what i’m actually doing is putting all my money in a paper bag, lighting the bag on fire and throwing it out my car window. the only ones who consistently win are the offset printers and the US postal service.

jonathan’s post was called “the system is broken” and it does seem that way sometimes. my friends who have Real Jobs are often amazed and appalled at the way the photo business works. corporal bennett’s response to jon’s post: “It really DOES seem like photographers by and large are motivated by fear of failure and will blindly spend any amount of money that they think might help make them successful. . . There are few other groups of professionals that are willing to almost put themselves out of business to stay in business.”

but then again, i look at today’s post on iliketotellstories.com and i’m reminded of why even though i don’t really know jonathan saunders personally (we’ve exchanged a few emails and brief IMs) just the fact that his site exists makes me feel better. it’s not even any one particular picture or one particular idea. it’s just that that guy is, plain and simple, an artist. no bullshit. i’ve long been one of those guys who would travel to see a woman who didn’t really care so much, so this post hit home for me. thanks, jon.

in other news, i sold my car a couple weeks ago. still getting used to the new one. this is one of the last pictures of my old car. i need a haircut.

———-

From: bennett@———-.com
Subject: Re: Ugly Cypress
Date: November 6, 2007 7:27:52 PM PST
To: max@msgphoto.com
Reply-To: bennett@XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com

So I finally broke down and bought a fabric grid for my little square softbox today. I’m sure its going to be awesome, but somehow it still felt like getting voluntarily mugged.

———

you too can pay $200 for a piece of cloth with velcro on it. just become a professional photographer.

so we’re gearing up for the next JDate ad shoot now. . . this next one should be fun. i can’t say much about it yet, of course, but it’s promising to be a little more off-kilter, which is always something i like. i get to do some things that i don’t often get to do in editorial work, which i’m very much looking forward to. and besides, i think these types of shoots are good for me. they have a natural optimism sort of built-in. it comes with the subject matter. you have to think it’s possible that these things (relationships) turn out okay. romantic-optimism. it’s good to dip your feet in such things once in a while.

i’ve been accused in the past of possessing a tinge of romantic-fatalism – i argue that this just comes from being raised in a secular new york jewish family with ties to woody allen. pessimism yields comedy. optimism yields greeting cards. i generally go with the funny.

but in these cases, for these sorts of jobs, it’s nice to put my romantic fatalism on hold for a while. just an afternoon. let’s not push it.

(this shot is my favorite from the last ad campaign – the baby was great, and hardly needed any makeup)