In a message dated 8/24/2005 6:12:41 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've been thinking about this off and on for a couple of days, and rather than coming up with actual photos, what keep coming to mind are the various weird situations I've been in during my long association with photography.
1. Had a visit from a guy in Elizabethton, Tennessee once. He walked in the studio and told me he'd like to have some photos made of himself for his girlfriend's birthday. Pretty standard request. No worries, I sez, and gave him the nickel tour of the studio. Here's the lights, the backgrounds we use, some packages we offer, etc. I pencil him in for a week or so later, and bid him adieu. A week or so later, of course, I'm in another studio 400 miles away and get a phone call. "Doug?" "yup" "There's a naked guy in the camera room" "anyone we know?" "He says you told him he could have naked pictures of himself." "I think I'd remember that, but nothing comes to mind" "What should I do?" "Tell him to put on his clothes." 2. Christmas season, College Square Mall, Morristown, TN, and I'm the Santa photographer. It's Friday evening, about seven pm, around a week until Christmas, and the place is packed. There's a line of fearful children and impatient parents roughly two miles long, waiting to see Santa, and I'm shooting two-year-old Nicholas. I have a decent shot of him, but I want the winning smile. I go for the big gun, a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll, to which I had attached some rubber bands. The ploy was to appear to throw the doll toward the subject, and boing! It magically returns to my hand. Hilarity ensues. Happy kid. Happy parents. Happy bank account. Except. Mickey continues his flight, FREE! no longer encumbered by the broken bands now snapping painfully against my outstretched fingers. It is not a soft flight, either. Nolan Ryan himself would have wept at the precision, the velocity, the unerring delivery, the audible FUMP! as Mickey plowed straight into young Master Nicholas' unsuspecting visage. Certainly the throng was impressed. You could have heard a butterfly sneeze in the silence that accompanied my frenzied attempt to chase down Walt's prized creation. And it was bad. Nicholas looked at me, and I saw in his eyes the uncertainty, the melting away of trust, the signs that I had, in one brief moment, planted the seeds that would bloom into a fear of photographers, of Santa Claus, even of Mickey Mouse! It was a triple play, ladies and gents, and I was clearly to blame for not knowing the condition of my little rubber bands. His little face began to cloud up. And then the deluge. I was apologizing to his parents before Mickey had cleared the intervening distance. I continued doing so as his mother swept in from stage right to nab him from Santa's lap and kiss away those tears. I felt terrible. I was panic-stricken. In the turbulence I looked around. I caught brief glimpses of waiting families, shopkeepers, young lovers, punks, and then, I spied Nicholas' father, not far from his cooing wife and wailing son, and I was comforted. Because he was laughing his ass off. ============ Hehehehehe. You told me that story, #2, two years ago at GFM. Still a fine, fine story. Even better this time around. #1 ain't bad either. Doug, the raconteur photographer. Marnie aka Doe ;-)
