Stinking like pork fat and loving it.

Yesterday I ventured west of New Orleans, through Baton Rouge, and into the outskirts of Lafayette, Louisiana.  The mission - stop by five different meat shops, slaughterhouses, and delis to photograph a staple of southern health food, the cracklin.  Admittedly, cracklins aren't the most photogenic of foods, being that they're essentially fried chunks of pig skin.  As much as I love taking pictures and working through issues such as unflattering subjects, the road trip itself was even more fun.

I hate driving.  There's no point in softening that statement.  My wife will tell you that I have trouble sitting still and fidget constantly, so being forced to sit in a chair with at least one arm and one leg dedicated to controlling a vehicle is akin to torture.  I try to lessen the pain by eating junk food and listening to lectures on tape (though most people would probably say that hearing recordings about diachronic linguistics would make the drive immeasurably worse).  Regardless of my distaste for piloting the car, a bag of beef jerky and two wrong turns later (thanks again Google Maps), I made it to the first stop.

The best part about these road trips?  Being able to walk into a small, family owned shop, start chatting, and within 30 seconds be on my way to the back of the house to watch them do what they do.  They're usually excited about any sort of exposure which certainly helps, but something tells me I couldn't do that if it were a corporately owned business I was walking into.  These people cared.  I got a slew of stories from the owner of the slaughterhouse. The others were glad to say why their products were special, while throwing the occasional jab at the competition.  Keeping in mind that I was shooting pictures in fully operation shops during lunch hour, everybody was incredibly nice and accommodating.

I got to see things cooked and cooled and packaged.  I swapped stories with people whose accents we perfect examples of south Louisiana cajun.  I got greasy pork fat splattered on my feet and clothes while seeing chunks of meat sizzle in giant pots.  Everybody gave me little paper bags with samples to take home.  Even before the two hour return trip, all of the bags were soaked through with grease and cajun spices.  The car smelled like a meat shop the whole way back, but is was definitely a great day on the road.

Life lessons from event photography

A year ago I was walking into building I'd never entered, to find somebody I'd never met, to do something I'd never done.  Sure, I'd taken my camera out to a lot of different places and taken a lot of different pictures, but this was the first time that I actually had to produce and deliver photos according to set specifications.  How all that was going to work was an unknown to me.  I figured I'd follow my normal procedure:

1. Show up
2. 
   
3. Celebrate because I did such an awesome job

Fast forward through a year and over fifty events.  I've learned a lot, only, not at all what I expected to learn going into this.  I'm going to have to break this into multiple parts because it's getting a little too long for my taste.  The first part here will be the non-picture taking learnings, starting with this -

Experiences of almost any kind follow the same pattern.

1. You start off in the honeymoon phase; you're nervous and excited, you learn a lot in a short period of time, and you love what's going on.  
2. After a while, the excitement goes away and you enter the dreaded "this is bull sh*t" phase.  You realize that things aren't perfect, that there are more challenges than you thought, you want to quit and retreat into your comfort zone.  
3. If you make it through phase two, you end up in the acceptance phase.  This is a leveling off of emotion where you're not distracted by the highs and lows, but find a balance in what you're doing.  This is the stage where you start fine tuning and improving things.  This is where you get good at what you're doing.  

After reflecting on my experiences over the last year, I realized that I've gone through this pattern with a lot of things - travel, work, exercise, hobbies, and most definitely photography.  Not everything makes it through the phase two, but persistence and experience and a drive to make things better usually yields results.

People.  Yes, just "people."  I'm not a naturally boisterous and gregarious person, but going into crowded events with masses of people I don't know has helped define what I enjoy about other people and myself.

• I enjoy that I can be the pillar of calm in a chaotic environment.  The phrase "herding cats" comes up a lot during my events.  The contacts I work with are often apologetic for having trouble getting photo subjects together for me.  I get to tell them "It's normal.  If you see me getting stressed out, then you're doing something wrong."
• I enjoy that I've learned to appreciate truly nice people and that I've developed patience for unpleasant people.  We humans cover a very broad spectrum of personalities, some more tolerable than others.  Face it, some people are just dicks.  Minimize your time with them and move on.  
• I enjoy that I've had to question how I deal with others.  Do I do like some people who treat me like an idiot when I ask them to spell their simple names (Jon Smith v. John Smithe)?  Or do I empower them to get it right by actually spelling out Kharamapakiev for them?

After having dealt with doctors, hospital owners, politicians, chefs, lawyers, grammy winners, athletes, actors, and all manner of businesspeople, the main lesson is simply to make eye contact, extend a hand, and smile.  If there's a human on the other end, they'll normally respond in kind. 

Part Two - The finer points of photographing parties will come later.