Thankfully, this year will start pretty much the way last year did–-with the Digital Landscape Workshop Series in the cold of Yellowstone Park. It is magnificent. Hell, even I got a couple of decent landscapes, but that was mostly cause I went over and stood by Moose.These jaunts are terrific for me, cause I get to brush up on my wildlife biology. Did you know bison use their overlarge head as a snowplow in winter months to push aside the surface snow and get to the vegetation underneath?

Actually, me in the wild is ridiculous. I can spot a creep or a weirdo three cars away on the NYC subway, but out there I’m frikkin’ clueless. I looked up last year and the whole staff was waving at me, desperately gesturing. A bison had walked up behind me and was close enough to pick my pocket. This horned beast bigger than a mini-van just strolled up beside me while I was like, checking my white balance or blowing my nose or doing some other nerdy, East Coast, big city, pansy ass flatlander bullshit . Thankfully, he was uninterested, probably cause I had been wearing my snow pants constantly for about three days and smelled bad. After he walked past, I looked out at Moose, standing on the road. He just closed his eyes and shook his head.

I’m looking forward to it. Maybe we’ll have the same driver! I tell ya, wheeling around in a six ton snowcat with somebody as psychologically brittle as the ice in the trees adds zest to the day. We had a couple brothers out with us last year who were both docs, and they sat directly behind me. After one particularly harrowing slide around the back roads, complete with narration, I must have looked very worried cause one of ‘em reached around and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Joe, we’ve got the hypodermic ready.” I hope they signed up again.

Hey, how about that Kelby guy? Has he got connections or what??!! A custom made Nikkor 14-24 f2.8 lens with VR! Talk about having your cake and being able to hold it steady while you eat it!

Scott was joking around of course, and the lens don’t exist, but some folks kinda took the news and ran with it. It re-convinced me of a couple of things….A) the power and reach of Scott’s voice in this industry, and…B) the passion folks have out there for digital photography. Pretty cool. Got me to thinking.

If I could custom design a camera, what would I put in there?

First, it would be called the D3Z Transformer model, or something like that. It would have the voice of Optimus Prime and at the start of each shoot, his rich, reasonable, impassioned baritone would beseech the subject: “Give this worthy photographer time and access to do his good work upon which the fate of many hangs.”

I mean, who wouldn’t listen? If they didn’t you could switch to “Vader Mode” and the camera would start to emit aqualung type noises. A far more sinister voice would then intone: “I find your lack of enthusiasm disturbing.” The camera would then send out some sort of sonic infrared radio signal that would constrict the subject’s air passages. I mean, they figured out how to send flash exposure information wrapped around light frequencies, surely they could figure this out. Talk about useful technology.

It would have—Custom Menu Function M3—This is the  “NOT THAT LENS, ASSHOLE!”  custom function that activates automatically whenever you are about to make an irretrievably stupid lens choice. I would hear this often.

It would definitely have “The Moose Peterson Move.” This would cause the camera to stop and make a beautiful picture out of something you just walked past and didn’t see.

I would attach the blinking highlight warning to an air raid siren.

The grip on the camera would be wired to read my pulse and blood pressure, and it would also have audio sensitivity so that my muttered utterances which currently simply bounce quietly off the lcd and disappear unrecorded into the air are actually duly noted and metered for stress in my voice patterns. If my pulse or BP spikes, or I complain too much about the situation, the light, the time, the fee, or my own ineptitude, a voice from deep within the camera quietly but firmly says, “Remember Joe, you said yes.” Thus admonished, I continue to shoot.

It would have a very selective function button called the “Celebrity Tool.” You could only apply it to certain subjects who have, you know, potential. This would lighten and coif the hair, maybe trim a few pounds, smooth out the skin, automatically turn the photo vertical and slap some appropriate tabloid magazine logo on it, like, you know, “Starrzz with Buzzz!” In a sub-menu of this move would be a variety of add-on or design options:

Insertion of an incredibly cute puppy.

Selection of splashy, eye grabbing pull quotes, such as…”____Speaks! I’m Still Pissed!” Or, “Available Now! Space in My Womb!” Or perhaps an inflamed admission: “_____to _____ : It’s The Bodyguard’s Baby!” Thus packaged, it would then be dispatched wirelessly to your agent who could possibly pass this person off as “the next big thing.”

Right next to the RGB selector in the new color menu would be an autofocus mode called GWB…means the camera will focus on nothing.

I would also request a sports version of this highly advanced picture making machine that would include:

Custom Function “Brett Favre” –An auto function. Whenever you make a good frame, the camera runs around and slaps you on the butt, shouting “Way to Go!” Being whacked on the ass is vastly preferable to what is generally happening back there to most photographers in the current business climate.

The “Plaxico Burress Default Mechanism”–This is a locking device that initiates whenever you have it slung over your shoulder, dangling at your hip. It prevents the camera from accidentally shooting your leg. (Good thing Burress didn’t shoot himself in the ass, he’d have brain damage on top of everything else.)

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Lessee….hey, if you want to start your New Year off right, have a laugh, be photographically enlightened, and look at pictures that leap right out of a very spring loaded imagination, go to Drew Gardner’s website and blog.

As they say in England, positively “mad” not to mention “brilliant.” Drew is based in London, and shoots and teaches everywhere, including good old Maine Photo Workshops and over at GPP in Dubai. He has categories on his site, like “Epic Fashion,” which perfectly describes his approach and invariably involves beautiful women, dangerous men, funky teenagers, all manner of woodland creatures and an entire array of barnyard animals. He also has the audacity to have a category called “eccentrics.” I pinged that and expected a self portrait.

He’s unstinting in dispensing his considerable knowledge, a genius at controlling huge shoots (fashion models and wild animals, what could go wrong?) and a hoot to boot. He’s also a good guy. I know this cause he tolerates my antics when we teach together. Last year in Dubai I tried to light a room by bouncing an SB800 off his bald pate. He was very patient, even though he got a little sunburned when I went to manual 1/1.

Check out the K-Man who almost took the plunge with a bunch of Jersey Polar Bears who ran into the Atlantic Ocean for charity. Cool post, and nice shooting. Photographers. We’re crazy, right? The manual says don’t get the camera wet, and we just don’t listen.

I’m always shooting my own stuff, but might try for some sort of personal project stuff this year, along the lines of Mark Seliger’s pictures in his elevator shaft thing. I’m thinking about, “Pictures from Under my Porch.” There’s a lot goin’ on down there, I tell ya.

I jest of course, though a buddy of mine, Aaron Ansarov, started a project called “In My Backyard” which has taken on a life, literally, of its own and the last news I had, a piece of it might run in the National Geographic. As I always say, the best pix are right there in front of you.

Hope some real good ones will be in front of all of us in 09….

The horse’s name was Bill, as I recall, and this little girl’s mom had been called up to serve in the Gulf War and she was staying at a neighbor’s for the duration. Shot if for LIFE back in ‘91 and its one of those rare frames that kinda stick around. Figure we could all use a hug right about now, with 09 getting pretty damn big in the viewfinder.
On the last day of some year, I got gas at a filling station on Manhattan’s West Side, just off Riverside on 96th. The station’s gone now, of course, as most are in the Big Apple. An elderly African American gentleman was tending the pumps. We stood, staring out at the cold, saying nothing (hey, we’re guys), listening to the gas moving and the meter ticking. The dollars and cents wheels moved much more slowly back then.

He finally looked over at me. “How you doin’?” he asked. I allowed as I was doing okay. I said something along the lines of “Made it through another year.”

He snorted and looked at his watch. It was about 4 in the afternoon. “Few hours left. Don’t get cocky.”

Been a little light on the blog lately, but for a good reason. My final final deadline for The Hot Shoe Diaries is this weekend, and ink hits paper in late January and the book ships in late Feb. Done. Out the door.

Lots of thanks to offer for making it through this year, to lots of folks, certainly those who stop by this blog now and then. I’ll post again with some notes, thanks and thoughts in a couple of days. Happy New Year to all, and let’s keep pushing pixels in 09…..more tk.

Yes, indeed, the Dobbs Ferry Workshops are alive once again. I’ve gotten pinged a bunch over time about reviving them, so we contacted our old studio building back on the Hudson and they said come on back. We will have a classroom/studio room, and the run of this old funky factory building down by the train tracks and the river. Great setting. Lots of peeling paint. Dingy hallways. Loading docks. Photog’s dream.

They will run Jan. 19, 20, 21, 22 and 24. We will have breakfast and lunch, snacks, free parking and multiple models, all days. Class size is limited to 12. Fee is $350 for a 10-11 hour day. We will go hard all day, showing examples, shooting demos, working big flash and small flash. Participants get time behind the camera as well as time gripping for shoots and moving gear. We will talk about light all day.

Bogen Imaging and Adorama have stepped up big time to help us out, and we will have toys galore, from big AC power packs to Elinchrom Rangers, Octas, beauty dishes, umbrellas, soft boxes, flats, panels, long throw reflectors, Skyports, c-stands. The whole deal.

We will use SB800 and 900 units, and craft i-TTL solutions that will rival the big flash solutions, and show how to move fluidly between big flash and small flash, and mix the two.

Beauty of working in Dobbs is how close it is to NYC, either a 35 minute train ride (we will pick you up at the Dobbs station, and drop you at end of day) or 45 by car from mid-town Manhattan. And the building is big. And we can move around, and move fast. We had a great time when we did these a few years back, and then we kinda let ‘em go when we moved the studio a bit north to CT.

But they’re back and they’re alive. Hit Lynn with an email at lynn@joemcnally.com, or phoner at 203-438-4750. She’s got details and class lists going.

You can also view the workshop announcment here, or download a PDF version here.

THE LKE! (LIGHTING KIT FOR THE ELDERLY)

I thought Jeff (jsnyder@adorama.com) was gonna shoot me when I posted all this stuff and told the world to give him a shout. (But then he wouldn’t wanna hurt an old person.) Typical Jeff, though, he scrambled all the below together, so now you can go individual and get the pieces, or the entire kit, and save $25 and get free shipping. Bob Krist is also very relieved, cause he thought he’d have to start staffing up at home and putting all this together to ship out, and that would interfere with him watching Oprah every afternoon.

The entire kit listed below is SKU# JMLKE, in Adorama’s system (Though, it’s so new that it isn’t yet on their website- So if you’d like the entire kit, please contact Jeff Snyder directly at jsnyder@adorama.com; the same goes for the Westcott umbrella and Morris bracket).

FREE SHIPPING AND a $25 SAVINGS if purchased as the “kit”, vs individually

GTBHMI GIOTTOS MH1004 MINI BALL HEAD - 1 $12.95

SB300405 STROBO ACCESSORY SHOE- 1 $10.95

BG3373 BOGEN 6′ RTRCTBL 5-SCTION STND-BL - 1 $58.50

WEUMB43WSC WESTCOTT 43″ WHITE SATIN UMBRELLA - 1 $19.99

STCIM2500BK HARDIGG STORM IM2500 CS - BLK - 1 $120.95

FAHSG18 HONLPHOTO 1/8 SPEED GRID F/POTAB - 1 $24.95

FAHSG14 HONLPHOTO 1/4 SPEED GRID F/POTAB - 1 $24.95

FAHSN HONLPHOTO SPEED SNOOT 8″ REGULAR - 1 $24.95

FAHSNS HONLPHOTO SPEED SNOOT 5″ SHORTY - 1 $19.95

FAHSS HONLPHOTO SPEED STRAP F/SHOE MT - 2 $9.95

FAHGK HONLPHOTO ROSCO GEL KIT F/SPEED - 1 $24.95

BG175F BOGEN SPRING CLAMP WITH FLASH SH - 2 $54.90

MTH-202 MORRIS BRACKET - 1 $27.95

You already know the ones…the ones that really terrify you. The ones you think you can’t handle. The ones you think are way, way, beyond your capabilities. Gateway assignments. The ones you need to take. They come in on the phone (rarely) or in the email of your imagination as loud as the “TERRAIN! TERRAIN! TERRAIN!” warning in the cockpit. You must respond. You must engage.

Increasingly, these are the ones you give yourself.

On the other side of that job, win, lose or draw, you will be a different photographer, and presumably, absolutely, a better photographer. Like a redwood, you just accumulated another ring. You could liken it to a scar, the way things go in this business. I try not to think about it.

But here’s the beautiful thing about scars. They are on the surface. Not attractive perhaps, but at the end of the day, inconsequential. They don’t affect your core.

Someplace at or near my core, I’ve got this fortress. It is well fortified, and I don’t let anyone in there. No tedious editor, no residue from a soul blasting job, gets in there, ever. Cause inside there lives whatever makes me love doing this as much as I do. Dunno the why’s and wherefore’s of it. I don’t unwrap it or turn it upside down and shake it, trying to figure out what’s inside, cause I might break it. It is what makes me hold my breath at the camera, makes me curse my mistakes and short circuits of mind, will and body, and gives me the recurring nightmare that I am swimming underwater and when I try to break the surface I find it is glass. I can’t break through and I am breathing water and jaysus-be-jaysus where the hell is the next good frame? Why can’t I figure this out and why haven’t shot anything worth a good goddamn in the last bit of forever? Is this the end of the road and the limit of my talent? I wake up in a cold sweat.

Nice, huh? The miracle of photography, sitting on your chest in the middle of the night like a big wet dog, panting in your face, demanding to be fed.

Like the boxer in the song, photographers remember every cut. I certainly do. (It’s just that way with the Irish.) Those cuts are the jobs, the frames. I can remember what I said before and after certain rolls went through the camera. I can remember what I had for breakfast that day and whether I was just shy of 5.6 at one twenty fifth. I can remember the smells in the air, and just how miserable, elated or terrified I was. Often, I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but those are yesterdays I didn’t make a picture.

Ironies abound for photographers. They are occasionally huge and cruel and we either laugh them off, smile through our tears, or are crushed by them. Some are small and produce rolled eyes and a sigh. We are on assignment to shoot the CEO, but we come up the freight elevator. Our work adorns the hushed hallways of corporate palaces even as our demise is plotted and graphed. The rakish, insouciant legacy of a Robert Capa and the derring do that produced those pictures that are the stuff of our collective memory is celebrated and paid lip service, but hey, wait a minute, look at these expenses! That was then fella, and this is, well, now.

Or, we attend a photo gathering where a picture editor exhorts us from the podium to step it up, work harder, get to a new level, and push the envelope. Then that picture editor goes into closed door meetings at their shop and advocates against raising the day rate.

I am the last staff photographer ever, at LIFE magazine. I didn’t get that mildly undesirable title by doing anything in particular. I just kept shooting assignments, and then they fired me. Later, the magazine did its final, absolute death spiral. Like Santino in the Godfather, it took a lot of bullets, but it finally went down for good.

Round about that time, the Time Warner colossus was seeking to “build a bridge to the visual community.” and instituted the Eisie’s, a prestigious series of awards in honor of the legacy of Alfred Eisenstadt. It was determined that LIFE would be the host and sponsor magazine, much to the dismay of TIME, then the big budget gorilla of the photo world.

During my brief tenure at LIFE, I agitated to do stuff, as all of us do. One result of my agitation became a story the mag called “The Panorama of War.” It won the first Eisie for journalistic impact.

I found myself on stage, at a gala hosted by LIFE, accepting a LIFE sponsored award for a LIFE assigned and published story. Mildly ironical problem, though, as I stood there, prize money and the paperweight of the award in hand, was that LIFE magazine had fired me the week before the ceremony. I chuckled inwardly as I smiled at the podium. I even smiled at Norm Pearlstine, the boss of the whole deal, who was sitting in the front row, looking for all the world like he was in a dentist’s chair. I actually felt bad for him cause he had come over to run Time Warner from that sea of type known as the Wall Street Journal and had never met a picture he understood. Here he was at a photo banquet, fer chrissakes, and later, he had to give out the most important award of the night, and thus make the longest speech. He had a terrible time pronouncing “Sebastiao.”

So it goes, and it always has. We are on our own. Whether we are on assignment or on staff or on Flickr. Whether we are making a buck or winging it, unfunded and unfazed, on the increasingly threadbare seat of our pants. That’s as it should be. Trust me, When it comes to corporate belt tightening, housecleaning, and general neutron bomb keep-the-building-lose-the-people cost cutting, we are both the baby and the bathwater. We get thrown out. They will never understand that picture gathering cannot be plotted on a chart, estimated in a graph, or measured in people hours relative to numbers of units produced. Thank God. If they ever figured it out, and really understood the astonishing alchemy of it all, they would want to be us, and trust me, there’s already plenty of us.

One of my heroes is Frank Hurley, the shooter on the Shackelton expedition. He was one tough nut of an Aussie. When their ship, the Endurance, got locked in the ice, he stripped down and dove into the frigid hold to retrieve his plates.

Hurley “is a marvel,” wrote Frank Worsley, captain of the Endurance. “With cheerful Australian profanity he perambulates alone aloft & everywhere, in the most dangerous & slippery places he can find, content & happy at all times but cursing so if he can get a good or novel picture. Stands bare & and hair waving in the wind, where we are all gloved and helmeted, he snaps his snaps or winds his handle turning out curses of delight & pictures of Life by the fathom.”

As Shackleton said, “What the ice gets, the ice keeps.” The Endurance was doomed. The crew was stranded. Hurley kept shooting.

The ever prescient David Hobby just threw a big rock into the pond of our psyches. Lots of ripples, from Chase Jarvis to Moose Peterson, to Vincent Laforet to the gang over at Sports Shooter. Just like a couple hundred photographers at the exact same location will produce a couple hundred picture points of view, there are lots of opinions out there, from “Yeah, that’s the deal,” to “Is he crazy?”

Not crazy at all, methinks, and that’s not to say we should all apply for non-profit status. I think what David is talking about, really, is not dollars and cents but growth and direction as a photographer, increasingly an isolated task, as the more collective staff photographer experience withers and dies. My advice to young photographers has always been to join the staff of a newspaper or wire service. Get some editor on your case, putting your ass on the street and your eye in the camera everyday. Come back to the wet darkroom to soup your stuff with the rest of the shooters and kibbitz, compete, spin tales, drink beer and give out shit. And listen. And learn.

That is increasingly anachronistic advice, of course. Digital has changed the deal, and the curves in the road upcoming for all of us are steeper, sharper and many aren’t even on the map yet. More so than ever, we are on our own, crafting a path unique to our skills, intentions and career goals. Take a look at Doug Menuez’s recent musings on career path.

A career in photography is a journey without a destination. And really, do you think someone’s gonna buy you a ticket to someplace you can’t even point out on the map? Try writing “meander” on a travel requisition and see how far you get.

I’m not suggesting you don’t need to make money as a shooter. Far from it. But those pictures we get, the ones we keep close, the deepest cuts, if you will, are really of our own volition and making. And those are the ones we seek and need, or better, the ones that seek us. They are way stations. You will stop there, or need to stop there, no matter if someone is paying you or not.

Cause what we are talking about here is food for the table and food for the soul. You gotta sell your stuff. You gotta pitch clients. You gotta make some dough with that fancy machine you have in your hands. And there is no problem with that. It is in fact, a very honorable and wonderful feeling to make your living with a camera. Trust me, I have shot all manner of jobs. I’ve shot for clients I shouldn’t have worked for, just to keep the studio alive. I’ve shot bad deals just cause I wanted the pictures so bad. I’ve shot wonderful jobs that have pushed me personally and professionally. I’ve even gone to photo heaven. In the last couple of years I’ve worked for a client whose art director is a wonder, the people running the show have become like my family, I’ve been treated fairly and I’ve expanded creatively. And, along the way,  I’ve shot jobs so thoroughly mercenary that in my head I don’t hear the whir of a motor drive, but the kaching of a cash register. Its a wonderful sound. It means I will be able to keep that camera in my hands a while longer, and extend a little further, reach a little deeper, and stay the course. What an amazement! I got paid to do that which I love!

Many pictures I shoot nowadays have only me as the client. They are pictures I need to do and want to do. I fund them myself. Did one last week in Vancouver. Wanted to work with a dancer, so came in early, rented a studio, paid an assistant and paid the dancer (I always pay the dancers, they work just as hard as we do and make even less) and shot some pictures I really like. When I finally get home I’ve got a studio, six square feet of chrome diamond plate flooring as a backdrop, a smoke machine, some heavy gauge chain, a battered chainsaw, and a physical trainer whose endearing nickname is “The Pain Chisel” all arranged for. Can’t wait.

I could gin up a portfolio of fancy flying, dancing, body bulging, glam type pictures and bring them to one of the stylish, au courant type magazines, and they would laugh me out of the building. I’m realistic about this. For better or for worse, I grew up shooting for mom and dad’s magazines–LIFE, National Geographic, Time, Sports Illustrated. At a place like Vogue or Esquire or GQ, I couldn’t get arrested. At one of the hipper men’s magazines, a book I’ve shot a couple covers for and a couple years back knocked out a fashion piece involving the U.S. military (which they liked so much they expanded the story from six to ten pages) I had to go in and show my book to the new, thirty-ish photo editor. He liked my stuff and was very respectful. As he closed my portfolio, he looked at me and said, “You’ve had a great career.”

In other words, “I’ll hire you for an editor’s note picture if I can’t find someone else at the last minute.”

Okay. Picture editors at places like this are relentlessly searching not so much for good pictures, but for buzz. Occasionally, good pictures and buzz coincide. Tough thing is though, even when they are able to stuff good pix into their mag, it is so graphically cluttered (the printed version of a sound byte) you can’t really enjoy ‘em anyway. Hell, lots of times you can’t even find ‘em.

Will some of these pictures I pursue on my own ever sell? Dunno. Never been much of a stock shooter cause my stuff has been so assignment specific. I get sales reports now with my pictures turning around eye popping amounts of remuneration, like a recent one I got from a prestigious bastion of publishing erudition for all of $4.67. Jeez, never thought a stock sale wouldn’t even get me into the movies. Shit, that one won’t even get me one of those big boxes of Raisinets.

I get a check like that and I either laugh or cry, depending on how many days I have left to pull together the mortgage. I look at these picture statements and I feel like a kid in a Cape May arcade who just turned about $50 of cash money into a clutch of “admit one” tickets that gets dumped into the counting hopper and spits out a chit that allows him to pick out anything in the shop that’s worth less than a buck.

This is not a good business model. My accountant on occasion has mentioned my endeavors lean more towards “hobby” than profession. Okay. The numbers don’t add up. Pretty much, I’ve never added up either, even to my parents.

We run when others walk. We work when others play. We adjust our schedules to accommodate theirs. We present the flimsiest of reasons to insist that we be allowed to keep doing that which we need to do, something for us that is as necessary as breathing. Paid or not, it is what we do.

By the way, at the age of 76, Frank Hurley came back off assignment, and shrugged off his camera bag and sat down, saying he didn’t feel well. He was dead the next morning. I suspect there was still film in his holders.

More tk….

Done with two SB 900 units, TTL, with the trigger device being the SU800 attached and extended off camera via the use of two linked SC29 cords. I do this often to extend the TTL signal and reach units that are fifty or sixty feet away in a creepy alley. The SU800 is perched atop a light stand and aimed so it will clip the sensor of the green gelled light that is on a floor stand and sitting behind Pooyia, Vancouver based shooter and Vancouver Workshop assistant for the week. He embraced his role as “lunatic in the alley with the axe” with a disturbing amount of fervor. Up front, my friend Hannah does the  noir “young damsel in distress” thing incredibly well. She is lit with the Lastolite Ezy-Box Hotshoe light, the new one with the interior baffle. It makes a great, localized, portable portrait unit. Nice and soft, not too much spill. It too, is positioned so the SU800 can see it.  It looked something like this on paper….

Hannah Coleman is a wondrous New Zealander and one of the truly talented ballerinas I have photographed. We worked together on the Nikon SB900 video, when she was dancing with the Boston School of Ballet. For the video, she pulled some absolutely stunning dance moves, in addition to this amazing sort of on pointe catwoman. (Halle Berry move over!)

She mentioned she was leaving the school to dance for the Calgary Ballet Company. Hmmmm….things pass into the rolodex of my noodle, and when I was heading for the Vancouver Workshop, I pinged her on email. Wanna do some pictures and work with the class?

She basically emailed back the words, “En route.” It was a terrific stroke of luck for the class as they had Hannah flying, leaping, turning and twisting, all with grace, enthusiasism and good humor. I threw my hoodie on her and brought her outside by the docks to do a TTL fill flash demo, and she immediately turned into the most beautiful hobbit you’ve ever seen.

The above is TTL, shoot through one half an umbrella. Left the backing on half of a Lastolite all in one, and then took some stripes of gaffer tape over the diffusion half, just to break up the light a little. Kept moving around her hand held, cause the flash is giving me some stop and sharp oomph, and the background is okay if it gets a bit moved and fuzzy.

My thanks to the BC gang for making it a wonderful week.

Onto the mild climes and laid back style of mid-coast California, and the Lepp Institute, run by the non-stop duo of Hal and Victoria Schmitt. We had a great class and a good time, knocking around the Los Osos/San Luis Obisipo area, or “SLO” if you want to pull off being hip and local.

Its stressful for me, though, to be in these super relaxed, hip, California type villes, mostly cause after being around NY for 30 plus years,  I jaywalk like crazy. Jaywalking is a lifestyle in NY, a non stop life and death board game played by motorist and pedestrian. It spices up your day, gets your heart rate going and provides ample opportunity for any of the aggrieved or irritated parties (that would be all of them) to be creative verbally, and loudly. I would be in SLO and simply cross in the middle of the block or against the light, and get eye daggers from the crowd at the corner, those relaxed and civic minded folks who are there drumming their fingers and obeying the big electric hand. But then, we’re here in grape country, and I figure its easy to be relaxed and pliant if you routinely have a half a bottle of wine for breakfast.

I found this great crosswalk in SLO….

Its got these sensors that activate flashing lights in the pavement when you walk into the street! Cool! I was fascinated by this and kept walking back and forth for a few minutes, much to the dismay of the traffic pattern on Higuera St. Some motorists got outright annoyed, but then I figure in downtown SLO, where every other shop seems to be devoted to the sale of pizza, there can’t be a real rush to get anywhere. Also, what was novel to me was that the lights were pointed towards the cars, alerting them to the presence of crosswalkers. (Not cross dressers, we’re considerably south of San Francisco.)

In Manhattan, they’d be pointed at the pedestrians so the drivers could aim their vehicles better.

Anyway, through the good relationships Hal and Victoria have with the local community, we gained access for the class to the Madonna Inn, which is, well, one of those places that happen only in America. Each room has a theme, from “Caveman,” to “Love Birds,” to “Sugar and Spice.” The gaudier rooms are a little piece of Vegas tucked away in California wine country.

For a lighting demo, we put Samantha, a lovely model who can look like peaches and cream one minute and Aphrodite the next in one of the uh, more understated rooms. Luckily, she showed up looking like she had just been dipped in the cotton candy spinner at the county fair, and thus fit right into all the sparkles and spangles of this exceedingly pink room.

Now, one could drive oneself batty lighting this funhouse, and try to manage every little bit and piece of glitz on the walls, but life is really, really too short for that. So I put up one big ass light–an Elinchrom Ranger with a long throw reflector boomed off the balcony just outside the windows. Cranked it out there as far as the boom would take me, and racked out the power and let fly. It comes through the window in the shape of the window, predictably, but then hits the walls and does unpredictable things, kinda the way sun light dappling through the window might. One light, no waiting!

More tk….