Tag Archives: location

lapdog

here kitty

Yesterday was a supreme asskicker. I went to bed at about 8pm and woke up at 2:30am and got to work.

The day was spent calling on clients with my last stop being a new one, a referral from an old college buddy who’s moved out of town.

The new client has several ventures – we tackled his first project for his art gallery for a few hours and later jumped in his car and headed about 40 minutes out of the city to enlighten me to his other venture: professionally trained guard dogs.

Apparently the “pro-dog” community way out there gets together once a week at a public field and does training exercises. guard dog training

The training is also associated with a sport called “schuntzhund” (I’m probably misspelling / mispronouncing it) – which is basically attack training and obedience reworked into a competition sport.

These folks take their dogs realllllllly seriously…. Most of the mutts being imported from Germany or Eastern Europe.

Aside from experiencing something I’d never seen before – it was extremely interesting chatting Mr. New Client guy during the commute. He’s a very interesting character with lots of fun stories. I’m looking forward to working with him and the possibility and probability of adding him to my collection of interesting people I call friends.

It was really too dark to make any images without relying completely on strobe. (ick) And my sleep deprivation also kept me from being as observant as I like to be when I’m thrown into new and odd situations.

It’s also the sleep deprivation that’s keeping me from crafting anything clever and stylized about my experiences.

I’m too tired to deny blogging.

hanging in the kitchen

filet for five hundred

The guy the home warranty people sent out seems to think our roof is shot and needs to be replaced. The rub? – That’s not covered by the home warranty – only repairs. Suddenly I feel like tracking down my real estate agent and sticking both feet up her ass for giving me the hard sell to buy the fucking warranty in the first place. (This is the second instance where the warranty’s “fine print” has screwed us – the first thing was the AC unit going out a month after we moved in).

So… We’re researching “Metal Roofing Solutions” .

The biggest part of the day was spent meeting with the ballroom client to review the shots and some concepts I’ve been working on.

What’s important to note is that this was the first “real” photo gig I’ve done for a client. (i.e. – The assignment was to go and take photos! Not snap things on the fly whenever they struck me or I needed content for a campaign pitch or doing favors for friends and/or pet clients).

I was a nervous wreck… Both taking the shots AND showing them.

It was a huge party and they were fully staffed that night… I’d never really spent any time in a professional kitchen in full swing before.

I tried not to rubber-neck the bearish boys running around in their “little chef’s outfits” and keep focused on the task at hand: Capture images of food and staff.

I went into “transparent mode” and within a half an hour nobody seemed to notice me.

I’ve got a whole new respect for mass-cooking. I’d be hard pressed to whip up multi-course surf and turf dinner for a few friends, let alone five hundred people. It was like being in a control room for a TV show.. The head chef kept an eye on clock and would regularly bark out commands… “Alright folks – we go salads in five!”.

The moral of the story is I got about 15 useable images we can use in ads and on the web, the client was stupid thrilled and I’m getting more confident about adding photography to our menu of services.

I’m sure if I had a blog or something where I could experiment with my abandoned discipline for months prior, it would have helped me get over the constant, nagging, neurotic insecurity that I suck.

 

high end desserts