Second Shooter Workshop

We have finally been permitted to share our workshop photos. Information and details about the Workshop were published yesterday though if you ask me its a relatively dull account of a fun idea turned day-long activity. So today I will rewrite the article with lots of fun details and the few photos I took that turned out alright but before I get started, here's the lot of us; 5 photographers, 3 models, and 22 students.

T'was a blustery cold morning and I walked through rain puddles speckled down Calhoun Street to the back door of The Gadsden House, Charleston's newest event venue. Inside I found coffee and bagels and a small notebook with my name scribbled delicately across the top in fine calligraphy. I took my notebook and a glass of orange juice and sat down front and center in our classroom, waiting patiently for others who do not share my "ten minutes early is on time" notion.

We spent the entirety of the morning learning TONS of photography facts. We went over everything from styling the reluctant and camera-shy groomsmen, to camera settings, to wedding-professional attire. We learned about gear, labs, presets, ambient lighting, unruly guests, and drinking on the job.

The photographers were really lovely people, relatable and good-humored. I was pleased to find no upturned noses or withholding of industry secrets. These five women were so excited to share everything they know, stating one main motivator for creating the workshop was their understanding of needing a professional photographer to take chance on you and let you learn from them. "We all started as second shooters." they would remind us as we blushed and stammered over our rudimentary questions about photography. 

The girls in the class were great. Some of them were so charming and fun that I wanted to steal away with them and spend the day giggling and goofing off. Some were more reserved and even fewer seemed to see the day as a competitive reality show, never curling their lips into a smile or whispering pertinent questions to keep the answer all to themselves. The lot of us are in a perpetual Facebook chat where we share photos and ask questions and for the most part, everyone is very supportive and proud of each other and our five photographer friends swoop in occasionally with informative articles and words of praise.

At noon we broke for lunch. We were given a few nearby options and everyone filed out of the building into the misty rain on East Bay Street. I heard the girl I had been sitting next to all morning say she left her wallet in her car and she ran off in the opposite direction of her classmates. I found myself in a pickle as my overly considerate mind immediately recognized that our class would get away from her and she would wind up eating lunch alone somewhere. So I fell to the back of the mob and decided to wait for her to reappear with her wallet. I waited three minutes and then realized that I don't know where this girl parked and who's to say that she will cut through the Gadsden House on her way to lunch? So I ditched my idea of being nice and set off to find my classmates. I never did find them and I ate lunch alone. She however, found the group and enjoyed a sociable repas. 

After lunch we started shooting. We had three shoots. Reception, Bride and Groom, and Groomsman with accompanying details. We broke into three groups and spent time shooting each section. My group started with the Groomsman. 

Our fella, Heath, was a friend of one of the photographers and seemed to have agreed to the shoot reluctantly. He at first seemed frightened under the gaze of so many detail oriented women. We looked him up and down and spun him around and angled his face and I reckon I would have hated it as much as he did. He was a rigid Citadel man with impeccable posture and a stone-faced expression. He barely flinched a smile and I could see his jaw muscles flexing as each girl approached him and gave him a once over. Heath really intimidated me. I don't take well to stern individuals and knowing I would be directing him in an area I just learned about made my feet sweat. Fortunately, I was the last in my group to shoot him so he was somewhat warmed up, as warm as I imagine Heath can be, and I decided my tactic would be to make him laugh. I'll be the one person who gets him to smile! I thought confidently, as I have an arsenal of jokes specifically tailored to the male brain.

I approached him cautiously, had him adjust his tie, and then look out the window. He stoically followed my orders and then held the pose long after I had finished taking my picture. "Look back at me." I said and his head slowly turned. "Would you like a joke?" I asked him, knowing from years of practice that the answer is, "Of course!" Instead Heath said nothing. He didn't nod, speak, or change his expression in any capacity. "Oh." I said, confused. "O-ok." and I found this very amusing.

What started as a choppy nasal exhale on my part turned into small giggles which prompted class-wide curiosity, personal embarrassment, and a very slight facial distortion on Groomsman Heath.

As soon as time was up I darted away from scary Heath, down the stairs and into a decadent, Vogue-esque set. Our bride and groom (and real life married couple) were Weston and Lea (pronounced Leia via Star Wars). Lea was very comfortable in front of the cameras and Weston seemed wholly unconcerned either way. If you wanted him to smile, he would smile. If you wanted him to stare at Lea, he would stare at Lea. In between shoots, while we reset or changed locations, Weston was watching a football game on his phone.

That last one of them is my favorite though it technically doesn't meet criteria. One of the instructors was talking so everyone turned their attention and Weston and Lea dropped their poses and started chatting and giggling. I looked over just as Weston said something that made Lea a little bashful and she playfully shied away from him. 

My last and favorite shoot of the whole day was the Reception shoot. The colors! The textures! I spent most of my time in this room examining flowers and running my fingers along the furs and velvet.

I walked out of the workshop wondering if I had spent almost a whole paycheck to find out I wasn't cut out for wedding photography. And I'm still not sure that I am. Wedding photography is an interesting juxtaposition of entry-level and master-crafted work. That is to say, lots of folks get their start in wedding photography but you also have to be darn quick with your camera for that to be successful. So you have to have mastered your camera before you even get started. That's not to say that photography would be any less difficult later on in different categories like fine art photography or commercial photography but by the time you get there, you've already encountered almost every possible shooting scenario and would handle it accordingly. You don't get your start in nature photography and then move to weddings, you know? 

Anyways, I've been doing lots of photo thinking and I have some ideas (and a shoot or two in the near future) but I haven't yet figured out what to do about this whole portion of my artsy disposition. 

So there.

A New Reason to Hate Val's Day

In honor of love, these photos are some of my favorite couples that you've never heard of. Just know, they're really great people and even better as a pair. Secretly, Big Lu really loves love.

Dad tells this terrible story about Valentines Day in elementary school. He was an outcast. The fourth of five Lebanese, big-nosed, last-years-hand-me-downs wearing kids and had a military haircut during the Flowing Locks era of the sixties. His heartless teacher had all the kids write their names on a paper bag and line them up on the front wall of the classroom. Then all the little jackass kids delivered their Valentine’s cards and candies to the corresponding bags and at the end of the day the kids collected their treats and danced off towards a love-filled sugar coma. But not Dad. Dad’s bag was empty. Not a single of his thirty classmates gave him anything for Valentines Day.

This little tale makes Mom, Ellen, and me want to cry. I think about this every Valentines Day and one year, I think I was twelve, I even made Dad 30 different (albeit, quite similar) Valentines Day cards and gave them to him in a paper bag but even that didn’t make me feel better. I’ve hated Valentines day my whole life but never because it made me feel especially single and unlovable but because my Dad’s feelings were hurt on Valentines Day in the sixties and I’ll never get over it.

Another reason Valentines Day is the pits is because, as a school-kid, you don’t know how seriously your candy grams will be taken. I remember that the themed packs of Valentines Day cards you picked out from Kerr Drug would inevitably include a number of cards that said “Be mine” or  “You’re my Valentine!” or other things that would suggest polygamy or a fear or commitment when caught handing out to multiple people.

“But I thought I was your Valentine?” some pimply, fragile boy would say to me every year.

“It’s just a card!” my sassy friend Cassandra would retort and she would shoo people with the flick of her wrist.

I tried to save the emotional or title-instating cards for my girlfriends who I knew wouldn’t read into the phrases and be more delighted that I had forced my parents to buy name brand candy to attach to the backs of the cards but every year you still wound up with the most unsettling cards and the most daunting names left last on the class list. These were people you did not wish to acknowledge on Valentines Day because your feelings towards them swung dramatically in either direction.

I remember laboring over who received what card phrase for I found all Valentine cards to be a bit melodramatic for a forced upon occasion of spreading love and tenderness. I did not wish to partake in the giving of Valentines but I had to because after years of kids like Chris Union staggering through elementary school full of hurt and shame, teachers wised up and required everyone to love on everyone. I tried to think of the kids that would get the worst, cheapest, and most sarcastic Valentines (the Chris Unions) and I would give them my nicest phrases and unbroken candy bars.

And guess who wound up smothered by a small contingency of class nerds with heart-wrenching crushes on her? I did. Valentines Day meant I would spend the following weeks warding off kids with glasses, allergies, and an excessive number of bug bites covered with Band-Aids and ointment.

Maybe it was middle school when we were no longer required to give false love to our classmates. I dutifully dropped out of the movement and instead took my mandatory place consoling my friends while they cried about their crushes not getting them anything special. I also recall recoiling at the sight of handmade, beaded bracelets that my friends expected their boyfriends to wear with pride.

"Oh my!" I would say, leaving the interpretation up to them.

Even now, as an impostor adult, I expect nothing for Valentines Day for I consider you mildly foolish to expend working hours pay on a marketers occasion. That said, I am a florist these days and the Valentines Day fools are a great asset to our money making venture. But this week something special happened. I had to make tons of vases full of red roses which was a bit redundant and my fingers are raw from thorn pricks BUT for every dozen roses I made, I wrote out a card message to each lovely lady who would find these roses in her office or on her kitchen table. Now maybe you're expecting me to say that the kind, heartfelt notes these fellas had me write on the cards were touching and unique and made me realize that when people really love each other they love to spoil each other and look for occasions to remind each other that they are special but that's not the case. Men are pretty unoriginal and I think most of them don't understand the concept of personalizing something. 

"...well it's Valentines Day, so roses I guess?

"Yes Sir but does she have a favorite flower or color? Does she like pinks? Pink can also be Valentines day-like but with a bit of a different spin and you know, nothing's more timeless than white roses. Would you like to do something more unique to her? 

"Nah. Red's good."

I mostly don't blame them. It's a crock holiday that tends to come at that burdensome time of year when you realize that the new year isn't really all that new or exciting and you're in the middle of rewriting your plan for the year. Shut up and take your roses lady! I love you!

That's what they're saying. 

But what I realized; for every little card that I wrote "Happy Valentines Day (female name)! I love you! - (male name)" one girl was going to get the full satisfaction of knowing that she is doing a sensational job running a tight ship, for (male name) knows better than to not buy her flowers on February 14th.