Back in Black

I’m at the office at the moment, preparing for my second wedding in two days. We had a double header this weekend, Friday and Saturday. Both sizeable events.

Last night was a nightmare that I managed to stumble my way through. Not for any malpractice on my part mind you, but just general system wide equipment failure. My Quantum Turbo battery bit the dust and my backup has some funky problem where after ten minutes it flashes “check turbo” and promptly dies. My boss’ camera litterly fell off it’s bracket. I handed off my rig to him so he could continue shooting while I fixed his. 30 minutes later and after completely replacing nearly every part of our setup, we got his into working order again.

Add to all that the fact that I was playing full contact camera hockey with a small asian guy with a pro rig. Apparently someone told him to come and take pictures “just in case” or some bullshit like that and he was in my face ALL NIGHT. For example, as the ceremony is starting, I’m positioned at the end of the isle so I can get the father walking the bride down the isle. I’m shooting away and suddenly this guy jumps in front of my shot. He does it again a half dozen times. After the ceremony he’s shooting directly next to our set up and copying us picture for picture. We had enough and told him in not so polite terms to get lost or else there would be physical harm. The rest of the night he kept on shooting anyway. At one point I tapped him on the shoulder and said “move… now” and gave him the dirtiest look I could muster. He was in MY spot for some dancing photos and had slid in there when I turn my back. He didn’t move, so I walked through and OVER him. I made it my personal mission to stand infront of every single shot he was taking for the rest of the night. He got the hint and by cake cutting time he was gone.

I can’t understand that. The bride didn’t hire him, the groom didn’t hire him, none of the family hired him or knew who he was. My only thought is that the reception facility hired him. I just don’t care actually. I’m hired by the family to take pictures of their daughters wedding. No one is going to get in my way, make me miss a shot I need, or make me compromise on an angle I want.

If I was hired as a 2nd photographer to someone, I would make it a point to go up, introduce myself, say that I’m not trying to get in their way but that I was hired to take picture of the decorations or something. I wouldn’t jump infront of another photographer like that. That’s the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen.

But the mashed potato bar was good, so, there ya go.

Todays wedding is further south of the city, at some country club thing. It’s smaller than last nights thankfully. We’re only supposed to be there from 3-9:30. At least, thats what we’ve been paid for. The party is scheduled until 10:30 but we don’t know if we’re staying that long. I hope not.

After the wedding I’m going to grab my car from the studio and head 3 hours west to New Braunfels, to a little ranch where I’ll be chilling for the weekend. Lauren and he family left this morning and I’m meeting them tonight. Thats why I hope the wedding doesn’t run long. Starting a 3 hour drive at 9:30 instead of 11 is a huge difference. Either way there’s Red Bull to keep me company.

Alright. Back to work. Have a great weekend everybody. I’ll be in Margarittaville if you need me. 🙂

Massive Weekend

What a weekend. It was kinda all over the place. Saturday I worked the 100th Aniversary party for American Nation Insurance or something like that. It was a crazy party with probably well over 1000 people. We were hired to photograph couples as they came in as a gift to them from the company. After that we were to photography the party, dinner and the presentation afterwards. The party was so big that we called in 2 extra photographers. I’m not sure how much they helped but it was nice to have someone to help carry stuff. Things went pretty well for the most part. My camera suffered a massive error and died about halfway through dinner, but hey, that’s what backup cameras are for, and we had 2 of’em. It was actually a pretty sweet rig, Canon 20D with booster pack, 17-35 L-Series (pro) lens, Quantum QFlash and Turbo battery kit all stuffed onto a custom bracket. I think it’ll be my main wedding rig once I figure out whats wrong with the camera. It might just need a firmware flash or maybe a good nights sleep.

Speaking of which, I didn’t get home until 2am from that shindig, which, with the time change became 3am. I slept in until about noon on Sunday. I haven’t been feeling well, I’ve got some sort of sinus/throat thing and it’s been real bugging me. I’ve been doing my usual Nyquil and OJ and it seems to be keeping the full-on cold at bay.

Sunday was pretty cool. While I was asleep, Lauren’s cell phone rang and it was Dan (from SCAD). He had a 4 hour layover in Houston before his fight back to San Diego. We figured since he was in the neighborhood we’d pay him a visit and grab some dinner with him and catch up. It was good to see Dan and he seemed to be doing well aside from stomach trouble from his excessive drinking the night before. He wanted to get something “Texas-ish” to eat so we took him for some mexican at Papasitos. After that we still had some time to kill so we stopped in at Frys before we brought him back.

Frys is quite possibly my favorite store on the planet now. It’s super Walmart sized and its full from floor to ceiling with everything electronic and computer related. It’s the only store I know of where you can go in and browse the “motherboard section” and physically handle the display board before you buy it. Not to mention the fact that isles to follow have every other component you can image. You can quite literaly walk into Frys and walk out with all the pieces to build a new computer at below retail, almost NewEgg prices. Add DVDs, CDs, Software and Home Electronics sections and you’ve got one sweet store.

And speaking of CDs, I went over to their techno section (yes, they actually have a techno/dance section) to look for the new Danny Howels Global Underground (after Chris reminded me which one it was) and ended up coming home with the greatest mix CD set ever made instead.

Renaissance: The Mix Collection by Sasha and John Digweed

3 CDs of pure genious. The quotes on the box sum it out pretty well…

“The re-release of this remastered 10th anniversay edition couldn’t have come at a better time” … “For many it was the first mix album they ever bought and for us it remains the best” … “Perhaps the greatest mix CD of all time”

Yeah. This is actually a re-release of the Uber rare original, which if I’m not mistaken, is going for hundreds on Ebay. It’s old school audio bliss. It makes me remember why I like techno in the first place.

Anyway, after we dropped Dan off we headed south back towards home when we decided to go see SinCity. A few phone calls later and Robin and Laurie are coming with us. We catch the 8pm at Cinemark.

SinCity is one of those movies I’ll have to sit and think about for a while. It wasn’t bad, it was ok, and there’s nothing that I can pick out instantly as something I didn’t like, I just can’t help feeling that it was only mediocre though. Not for any particular reason, it just didn’t thrill me as much as I thought it would. Like I said, it’s not “bad” so don’t think that I didn’t like it, it just needs some time to digest I think. The direction and cinematography were very well done. The visuals were perfect and consistant and the mood was as close to a Frank Miller comic book as you can possibly get. I think there was a thin layer of “cheese” on top of the whole thing and that most of the actors were dry and that every line felt like a one-liner instead of dialog. This could also be because 99% of the lines were taken directly from the books, not to mention about 90% of the shots through out the movie. They did a great job of trying to recreate EVERYTHING from the comics but in the end it just feels a little forced. There’s a quote from a reviewer that reads: “Accuracy isn’t the same thing as quality.” and I think I agree with that. Out of 10, from me it gets something like a 8.5. Apparently, the tomato agrees – RT 78%.

Today is my day off so I’m spending the whole of it enjoying my new CDs, trying to get rid of the spyware I just found (stupid f’ing ecards from my mom) and playing some more Brothers In Arms. I considered briefly getting a new Xbox game, but there’s nothing out right now that I feel like spending $50 on. DOA Ultimate is a thought, but I’d rather wait until it’s in the “Hits” package and $20 cheaper.

Lastly, my “Recent Links” plugin is completely borked. I’m trying to fix it but keep getting parse errors. I’ve sent an email off to the author, we’ll see what he says. That should be back up (or gone) in a day or two.

Matt out.

Off to see the wizard…

Well kids, I’m off. It’s 8:30 in the morning on Monday and I’m about to hit the road for a day long drive further to wards the equator. I don’t like hot weather and I’m unfortunately heading right for it.

This past week was very very long and tiring and this week will only add to it. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of “stupid pageant people” stories when I get back.

Later.

Two Weeks of Hell

I should preface this by saying that I’m half a sleep. If none of this makes sense you can blame it on someone else. Regardless of who’s to blame, I’m tired, and it’s only the beginning of my woes. Some could say that being busy is better than not. I say to those people, “you should try my kind of busy and then re-evaluate your stance on the subject”. We’ve been shooting the Texan Cheerleader squad for the past two days and it’s only just begun. Friday and Saturday we shot for this years poster project. 40 girls, 2 days and LOTS of background changes, costume changes, lighting changes. I’m friggin’ pooped. At one point I was standing, bent out to one side, holding a 20lbs “Sun-Buster” white translucent umbrella over my head for about a half hour. No, I don’t get hazard pay. Yes, I probably should. Thanks for asking.

In addition to the poster, there’s also a “publicity book” to do. This monster project, involves 7 continuous (6am-9pm) days of shooting. All on location. All at different locations, all over town. This also means that I don’t get a weekend. I have to work tomorrow, Monday, my day off. This displeases me. The overtime pay however, soothes the sting a little. A whole day at time and a half… hells yeah.

Wait. It gets better. All this Texans shooting wraps up on Saturday… the day before we leave for 9 days for Laredo TX for the Miss Texas USA beauty pageant. Oh yeah baby… thats right, 18 continuous days of work.

Where’s the Jack Daniels when you need it?

You know, I remember vividly the time that Jason, Nagle, Chris, Andy and myself waited outside the Trustee’s Theater in Savannah for 24 strait hours to get tickets for what we thought was the world premiere of The Legend of Baggar Vance. If you haven’t heard the story it bears repeating at some later point. The punchline at the end would have been that we had been awake for nearly 40 strait hours and we were a bit punchy toward the end there. That and Kimberly going to get a sandwich at 3am. And Chris trying to kill Andy… yeah, that shit was funny.

40 hours, compared to this, is a friggin cake walk. I’m sure I’ll actually get some sleep at some point in there, but I don’t really foresee being incredibly conversational toward the end of it all. After all, a week of skipping meals and running on Red Bull and protein bars can probably fuck with your head. Or so I’m going to assume. Ask me sometime around Saturday. That is, if I don’t punch you in the face for looking at me the wrong way. I have a tendency to be a bit cranky when I don’t get my nap, if you know what I mean.

Then it’s off to the beauty pageant… where the annoying people are. Lots of them. With the make-up and the hair-spray and the fakeness.

It’ll be like a vacation to the 7th ring of hell.

I’m going to go now, play a little BF1942 since I won’t get to for 3 weeks, and then go to bed. I’m not quite sure when my next update will be. We’ll get back from the pageant on the 28th, so don’t be surprised if it’s not until then. I would prefer that it were sooner, but I really don’t have much control over it.

Later guys. And wish me luck.

Funny Phone Call Friday

Actual phone calls or voice mail messages we’ve gotten at work this week. Names have been changed to protect the absolutely stupid:

Voicemail Msg: “Hello, this is Janet, I’m looking for a wedding photographer for my daughters wedding, could you please call me back at… *leaves OUR phone number*”

—-

Elderly Gentleman: “Do you sell photos?”
Me: “Yes, yes we do”
EG: “Wonderful, I’d like to order some pictures from my daughters wedding”
Me: “Alrighty sir, what is your daughters name?”
EG:”Jackson”
*shuffles papers trying to find that particular wedding*
Me: “Sir, when did we shoot this wedding?”
EG: “You didn’t, but the photographer that did has gone out of business”
*ugh*

—-

Voicemail Msg: “Hello, this is Marsha, we had our pictures taken yesterday, are they ready yet? Please call me back at…”

—-

Young Woman: “Yes, I’m having problems accessing your website, I’m using AOL and it keeps saying “unable to connect”, could you help me?”
Me: “Certainly, have you tried the website on a different computer or different web browser”
YW: “Not yet, I haven’t even connected to AOL yet, I just wanted to make sure it was working before I did”
*Matt slams head into desk*

—-

You know, I didn’t believe those tech-support horror stories until I was actually involved with one or two. Oh well, it’s not like pageant contestants are the smartest people on the planet anyway.

That’s all for today kids. Later.

Couldn’t sleep

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of updates, it’s been crazy around here. There’s work, more work, other work, etc, and I’ve been trying to spend my free time with Lauren as much as I can. I’m actually getting ready to go to work right now but I couldn’t sleep so I got up a little early and I have a little extra time.

We’ve been working hard to get things done and printed from the Miss Houston pageant last month at the same trying to get things ready for the bigger Miss Texas pageant next month. It’s a long and often aggravating process of looking through all 2000+ pictures from the event to find one single girl in one single outfit, THEN going back and doing that three times for each girl and there were about 100 girls who ordered packages. After I find them I have to open each one in Photoshop, crop it to the ordered size and then send it to our RIP Que. That’s RIP as in Raster Image Processing, not Rest in Peace. Although “Death Que” has a nice ring to it.

Backward from today, on Thursday we took the Houston Texans official NFL photos. The ones you see on TV when they do things like “…and this is the starting defensive line” and they show half a dozen really angry looking guys. Yeah. We did those. The photos also go in program books, in NFL ads and publicity stuff, etc. So that was pretty cool.

Lastly, next week I get to shoot the annual Police Officers Union “Police Officer of the Year” Awards. One of those city MVP kind of things. The mayor will be there, the police chief, folks like that. Should be interesting.

Oh, and I almost forgot, today after the photos we’re scheduled to take we’re building Paul a new computer. Nice rig too. Antec case, Athlon 64 3200+, 1G of Cosair, Ati Radeon 9800 Pro, WD SATA 40G hard drive. Should be fun to play a little DC with.

Gotta run. Work calls.