It's been a long time

I went to my ten year high school reunion over the weekend and was truly amazed by how much some people have changed.  Take Justin Ziniel, for example (pictured below).  He told me afterward that he was pregnant!  What a miracle of modern science.  I can't wait to see what everybody looks like at the 20 year gathering.

Variations on a Theme

Do enough of anything and you're bound to start making odd connections.

The up tongue

The straight tongue 

The down tongue

Anxious for 2012

anx·ious

  [angk-shuhs, ang-]  

adjective

1.

full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried; solicitous: Her parents were anxious about her poor health.

2.

earnestly desirous; eager (usually followed by an infinitiveor for ): anxious to please; anxious for our happiness.

I go into 2012 an anxious man, second meaning.  This has been an exciting year, one of pushing boundaries and taking risks.  I've enjoyed making big decisions and seeing a thousand little actions lead to new places.  I'm anxious to make more decisions, push things in new directions and then see those results.  Let's do this.

2011 was great.  

Here's to making 2012 even greater.  

My "Special" Family Traditions

Hello again

Yesterday morning I took a series of way too early flights from Columbus to Cleveland to New Orleans.  After getting in and fighting through the mental haze one acquires after attempting to function on two hours of sleep, I laid down thinking about the last ten days or so.  Being around multiple families for the holidays gave me a chance to look at the vast differences that family dynamics can take on.  The simple act of holiday gift giving takes on a variety of forms from group to group.  Some families don't do gifts, some know exactly what they're getting, some are all surprises.  Somewhere along the way, my sister, Jennifer, and I decided to forego giving each other real gifts, instead attempting to outdo each other with some sort of gag gift.  Sometimes simple, sometimes elaborately planned, there have been a few good ones over the years.

I've had something of a photo theme to a lot of my gifts.  They started one year when I scoured my mother's photo albums for all of the absolute worst pictures of my sister.   Those pictures that only a mother would put into a photo album.  Those pictures that would make you question her chromosome count. That year I gave her a framed collection of these terrible pictures, sort of an all-in-one reminder of her worst moments in front of the camera over the years.  While this gift succeeded in that it was hilariously terrible to look at, it did include a functional picture frame, and therefore lost points as a gag gift, which I think should be as useless as possible for the recipient.  

Since I'd already amassed a "worst-hits" photo collection, I stepped it up a bit the next year.  I took the four worst pictures I had, printed them onto sheets of iron on material, and made four t-shirts with her face front and center.  The next step was getting my parents involved.  I gave each of them one of the shirts to wear under a sweater Christmas morning, while I wore the third.  The fourth was lovingly wrapped and presented to Jennifer.  My co-conspirators and I all hid our shirts from view until she opened hers.  As she held the shirt up in the air to snicker in disgust, we revealed ours.  I don't know what she did with her shirt, but I still wear mine every Christmas morning.  

Another year I took probably the worst of the photos I had of her and printed off a couple hundred 2x3" copies.  A little time Christmas Eve and a lot of scotch tape later I had hung these little gems throughout the entire house, even venturing out to hide some in her car for later.  As hard as she may have tried to collect them, they were still getting discovered days later.  My extended family came over for Christmas day festivities and was immediately asking why there were little pictures all over the place.  What, other siblings don't do that?

Probably the greatest of my gifts was also one of the simplest for me to do.  The thought - what would be a gift that keeps on giving?  Something subscription based and terrible a la the jelly of the month club in Christmas Vacation.  Since I actually like jelly, I opted to scour an online magazine seller for the most obscene publication I could find.  So on Christmas morning she unwrapped a box, the only contents of which being a printout confirming her one year subscription to Plumpers magazine.  Plumpers, in case you're unaware, is basically a porno magazine featuring ladies in the 300+ pound range.

While the hope was that the magazines would arrive when she had polite company over and be delivered by a disgusted mail carrier, the best part of the story was when she moved out of her apartment.  For some really odd reason, she had saved the past issues of Plumpers (for the articles I assume).  Upon moving, she finally put them in a box destined for the garbage.  So what happens when you're dragging your shoddy box overloaded with refuse and niche porno mags to the dumpster? The box breaks open, the contents spilling onto the pavement.  Luckily you have a friendly but suddenly very confused neighbor come over to help you repack your box of collected Plumpers.  I can only hope that the next tenant continued to get the remainder of her subscription.

Her comeback was a gift that on the surface might look nice.  A serene picture of a nice beach.  Alas, the beach picture lifted up to reveal an exhaustive collage of very male and very explicit body parts.  My dad thought we needed to have a conversation after he saw the internet history on the computer Jennifer used to find and print the pictures.  My grandparents happened to be over that Christmas morning when I opened this gem, and they insisted on taking a gander at the gift.  They were far too interested and not nearly shocked enough when they took a nice long look at it.  I can't wait to get to the point when nothing you say or do matters because you've been around long enough to not give a fuck.  Anyway, this picture made annual reappearances, finding its way into my bed and into my shower of all places.

It's difficult to remember some of the things we've exchanged over the years.  Apart from the few elaborate ones, there was the roll of toilet paper, lump of coal, cat furballs, cat poop, dirt, banana peals, string of penis beads, boxes of whatever garbage happened to be in the trashcan at the time.  One year I wrapped up her car keys.  She had to find the car. This year she gave me a freshly soiled diaper, sort of a regift from my nephew.

This year I figured I'd reverse the terrible picture trend I had used so often.  My sister just had a baby (eight months ago) and I'm a thousand miles a way.  I didn't want my nephew to grow up not knowing what his uncle looked like, so I gave Jennifer a nice 20x30" print of myself to hang in his room or prominently above a mantle somewhere.

Blarg!

Believe it or not, it actually took a fair amount of work to get a combination of facial contortions that made me look most troll-like.  If my nephew did see it now, he'd probably cry think and wonder who the scary creature in the picture is.  As he gets older, maybe he'll come to see it for what it is; a shameless guy who rather enjoys acting like an idiot and taking pictures.

I'm coming to love these traditions that celebrate finding more and more sophisticated ways to act stupid.  People ask "You don't get each other real gifts?"  What is a "real" gift?  We might not have useful "stuff" after Christmas, but we have a good laugh, and we have stories to tell.  I can only be thankful that I have family and friends and a wife that haven't had me committed yet, and that they can act crazy right back.  Thanks guys.  That's a real gift.

Phishing for gems from the spam folder

Now and then a legitimate email gets misdirected to my email's spam folder.  Most of the time it's all crap that I don't want to waste even a fraction of a second glancing over, but I've had some annoyingly close calls with stuff getting stuck there so it's worth scanning once a week.  Again, mostly crap.

The following emails are not crap.  They're better than crap.  They're phishing scams that, were I in a position to waste hours of my life, I would really love to respond to and lead these guys on with elaborate falsehoods of my own.  One of my many talents is inventing realistic sounding names of companies.  Hell, with a couple hours and a few bucks, the properly motivated reverse-prankster could create websites, alternate email identities, and give real physical addresses (to real abandoned properties) to these asshats that are hoping to catch the two people alive that haven't seen the 60 Minutes special on these scams.

I'm not that motivated, but here are a few nice messages I've gotten in the last month or so.  Feel free to respond, but if any money changes hands, I'll need a 15% finders fee.  My barrister in Lagos will collect the appropriate information from you.

The Trusty Trustee

FROM AN ATTORNEY AT LAW
Hon.Barrister.Paparazy
Partner 72 Avenue Ouaga
Burkina Faso

Good Day ,

This is a personal email directed to you and I request that it be treated as such.
I am Barrister Paparazy, a solicitor at law. I am the personal attorney/sole executor to the late Dr. George , hereinafter referred to as’ my client' who worked as an independent oil magnate in my country and who died in a car crash with his immediate family on the 4th of Oct,1998. Since the death of my client in Oct, 1998, I have written several letters to the embassy with intent to locate any of his extended relatives whom shall be claimants/beneficiaries of his abandoned personal estate and all such efforts have been to no avail.

Moreover, I have received official letters in the last few weeks suggesting a likely proceeding for confiscation of his abandoned personal assets in line with existing laws by the bank in which my client deposited the sum of 18.5 Million United States Dollars.

On this note I decided to search for a credible person and finding that you bear a similar last name, I was urged to contact you, that I may, with your consent, present you to the "trustee" bank as my late client's surviving family member so as to enable you put up a claim to the bank in that capacity as a next of kin of my client.

I find this possible for the fuller reasons that you bear a similar last name with my client making it a lot easier for you to put up a claim in that capacity. I propose that 50% of the net sum will accrue to you at the conclusion of this deal in so far as I do not incur further expenses.

Therefore, to facilitate the immediate transfer of this fund, you need, first to contact me via email signifying your interest and as soon as I obtain your confidence, I will immediately appraise you with the complete details as well as fax you the documents, with which you are to proceed and i shall direct on how to put up an application to the bank.

However, you will have to assent to an express agreement which I will forward to you in order to bind us in this transaction.

Upon the receipt of your reply, I will send you by fax or E-mail the next step to take. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this proposal is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any fears as the required arrangements have been made for the completion of this transfer. Like I said, I require only a solemn confidentiality on this.

Best regards,
Barr.Paparazy Esq. mccc214@gmail.com

The Lucky Lottery Winner 

HIS IS TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR e-MAIL HAS WON YOU THE SUM OF 1,000.000.00 POUNDS FROM THE MSN/YAHOO®PROMOTION HELD ON 16TH OCTOBER 2010. CONTACT THE BARRISTER RENNY HARLINGS FOR CLAIMS OF FUNDS.
Name: Barrister.Renny Harlings
Email: renyharlings@hotmail.com
1.Full Name:
2.Full Address:
3.State:
4.Occupation:
5.Age:
6.Sex:
7.Country:
8.Tel.Number:

For Your Wonderful Work With The UN

You are to contact Dr Jacek Slotala of Bank Zachodni via his e-mail
address: jacekslotala@LIVE.COM with the below information for the
claim of your United Nations Compensation Bank Draft of $550,000.00
Full Names (Surname First).......
Current Address...................
Occupation ......................
Country........................
Telephone #..............
Age.....................

Contact him immediately with the requested information above for your
International Bank Draft of $550,000.00 USD.
Benjamin Jon for Gen Ban Ki Moon
Secretary General (UNITED NATIONS)

The Unordered Package
 

This is a post notification,

Your parcel has arrived at the post office on October 7.
Our Driver was unable to deliver the parcel to your address.
Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

Thank you,
FedEx Customer Services.

Guess what happens when you click on the attachment.  My money says that it's not an invoice...

Four weekends, four cities

Have you ever had one of those periods where you've been traveling almost every week and you feel like you left a little of your mind in every place you've been?  My last four weekends have been spent in Charlotte, New Orleans, Lafayette, and Columbus.  I'm looking forward to a low key weekend before what is sure to be another great Halloween in New Orleans.  After that, a few days in Florida to shoot a wedding, followed by a very busy November.  

Stuff from the last month that's still floating around in the old brain...  

I'm still processing info from After Dark Charlotte

Results of a visit to the Tabasco plant.

Band playing directly in front of the wall of the room where we slept in Lafayette.  

This car rear ended me. 

Engagement shoot on the OSU campus. 

Rediscovering the lost art of play

A week ago I had the extreme pleasure of going to After Dark Education in Charlotte.  Expensive trip, sure, but as I've spent the last week just trying to sort out all the things that I saw, it should prove to be money well spent.  After Dark is a collection of about 35 different photographers that come together to teach everything from studio basics to advanced business topics.  Over three days, you get to pick what you want to learn and who you want to see to get the most out of the experience.  It's all about getting up close with the mentors to talk, ask, and play.  This isn't your typical corporate conference, unless you work in an industry that keeps going strong until 3am every day.  There were a few big points that I picked up on while I was there.

"I'm right, they're wrong."  There's the saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat.  My three days in Charlotte burned that into my mind.  From 1:30 to 3:15 I'd hear one teacher say to do something one way.  From 3:30 to 4:45 I'd hear another person say to do it a completely different way.  For the students looking for a black and white "this is how you do it," their heads were probably spinning.  There are a ton of variations you can throw into the way you photograph things.  If anything that should be encouraging.  All it means is that you need to experiment and do what works for you.  The whole point is that you need to know exactly why doing things certain ways will get certain results.  


Why these people are "professionals."  Everybody has a camera now.  There are 250 million pictures uploaded to Facebook every day.  It's easy to think that since we have the tool, we're right up there with the big guys.  I'll tell you as somebody who has read countless books and taken huge numbers of pictures, that the difference between "I have a shiny new camera" and "I'm a professional" is bigger than you'd imagine.  I saw more than one teacher at After Dark look at a subject and estimate the proper aperture/iso/shutter settings within 1/3rd of a stop.  There's a big difference between creating an image in your head and using tools to bring it to life and using tools to just hack away at something.

"Go play"  I've used this phrase before and I love that it was used at After Dark.  Think about "play" as a child might.  It's that sense of uninhibited creativity that we're after.  Do things that you've never done, go places you've never gone, imagine, create.  Grab lights, a model, a piece of rental equipment, and go to the roof, or to the parking lot, or to a peddle boat.  The corporate world spent four years squeezing the sense of "play" out of me, so it was amazing to rediscover that feeling.  The great thing about "play" as an adult is that now I can infuse things like discipline and technical knowledge into the game to push things further and learn more from the experience.

The world is full of exciting possibilities.

Go play!