Photo Op

In a strange Six Degrees of Separation kind of way, I was introduced to the art director of a popular local weekly paper at the wedding of yet more friends-of-friends several weeks ago. KD suggested to me that I send the photos I shot at the wedding along to her. My internal response was something along the lines of 'no fucking way. She is Someone; I am Not', though my thoughts rarely include curse words so I may have made that one word up while typing this.

At any rate, I thought more about it, said 'mmm, yeah I suppose I could. It'd be good practice for being polite in the face of ridicule and guffaws. Sure, why not?'. So I sat down with the digital images I'd shot, cropped and cleaned them up a bit, then sent them along, attached to an email that said "Thought you might like to see pictures from the wedding. Please feel free to pass them along to any other folks who might like to see them" She responded with a lovely note that said she thought they were great, she thanked me for sending them to her and added that she'd send them on to The Bride (a photographer by trade). I felt instantly shy, but I was proud of myself for having successfully overcome the negative What are you doing?? Are you nuts?
thoughts long enough to follow through on something that I knew on a gut level would be welcomed and, I reassured myself, the photos weren't THAT horrible.


I was visiting a close friend in Washington D.C. last week when I received an email with the subject line 'Isthmus Photo Assignment'. It was a note from the art director, who wrote that she liked how I had no qualms about getting the angle I was looking for at the wedding and that she liked the end results. There would be a group playing at a local joint [which used to be a cigar bar until the very recent city smoking ban ordinance was passed, but that's a whole 'nother bag of butts and is, perhaps, best left for another entry]. Would I be available to take pictures of them to accompany the upcoming music column?

Given that it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I decided against issuing out a whoop of overexcited delight, mostly to spare my hosts from being forced to sleepily celebrate this unexpected good fortune with me. I worked out a response that I hoped would sound confident, easy, relaxed. 'Don't be overeager about this, you'll look completely desperate', I chided myself.

One email exchange later, I had the details I needed and she had my agreement to shoot Machiavellian Machine, a techno-ambient electronic musical duo. I had a day and a half to go through the shots, weed out the best from the truly sucktastic, then get an acceptable product back to her. With slight concern about the short turnaround time and my general sense of organized chaos, I woke unconscionably early on Tuesday to ensure a rush-free zone because those are the times I tend to pull my cart (uphill) while leaving the horse standing in the stable. Later Tuesday morning, like when regular people are awake, I received a response to the double batch of photos I'd sent along: The photos were great - I'd captured real feeling in the shots. She also asked for my address so she could send me a check for my work and thanked me again for taking on the assignment.

I was tempted to do that whole 'they like me! They really like me!' routine. It didn't matter to me if anyone ever asked me to shoot photos for them ever again, I'd been given the opportunity to experience the process once, and that was swell.

Yesterday I received another email from the art director. It bore the subject line 'Isthmus photo assignment'. I thought for a moment that she'd accidentally resent her original email to me, so I quickly scanned the short email message while simultaneously considering how to respond with an OOPS message - something along the lines of either "I'm so sorry to bother you, but I think I may have received this in error", or "Grab yourself a cup of caffeine sistah, you're sending outdated emails".

But it was a new request - for an upcoming assignment later this week.
Holy wow. I was truly surprised!

Now I have a new dilemna ... I keep thinking I really can't keep using the fairly outdated Fuji Finepix S5000 I bought several years ago and have been using on a near-daily basis ever since. Not when the camera of my dreams is out there, just waiting for me. Or the big girl's little sister, also a camera I wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers. I'm craving a hi-res camera with more functions and lens adaptability. Me want. Me want. Me want. Me will have to wait a little while longer.