Had an interesting adventure yesterday. A photographer came in to take some photos of me for a magazine I’m doing an article for. So I thought, Sure, she’ll come in, stand me in front of a wall, take a few shots, and that’ll be it.
My first clue was the two hours she expected to take in setting up. My second was when she showed up with an assistant. But that wasn’t enough. I looked at the
First, she suggested setting up her little portable studio in the cafeteria. OK, she was right in that it would be a nice location. Except for one little problem…I didn’t have permission to do any of this. I’d assumed this would be a small operation. So I asked a nearby cafeteria drone if it would be OK. I must be fair; she was great, and took me in back to her boss. I exlained we were doing a little photo shoot, and would it be OK if we did it to one side in the cafeteria? He smirked at me (taking me for a photographer, I guess), then said it was fine with him “as long as Terry’s OK with it.” Having no clue who Terry was, I simply thanked him and left. We weren’t really getting in anyone’s way in any event.
Then they started setting up, and the photographer’s assistant Jay put up lights. Three of them. But that was too much light, so of course Jay started turning off the overhead lights. Not switching them off; he was actually unplugging the lights from their sockets in the overhead compartments. Nobody seemed to be screaming at us, so I figured this was OK.
About this time, Terry showed up. Big, authoritarian guy. One of those born sergeants. Fortunately, he had no problems with what we were doing, as long as he knew what it was we were doing, and we weren’t actually impeding anybody. Phew!
So the photographer (Catherine) and Jay finally got everything set up, and the real fun began. Two hours of holding various poses. Catherine gave me lots of compliments about being very photogenic. Hey, it kept me in a good mood.
Once she was satisfied she’d had enough pictures, she released me from the spell, and they started packing up. I had to remind Jay to plug the lights back in. But we weren’t done; oh no. She wanted to do one more shoot. Noooo!
This one worked out much more nicely: there’s a hallway on the second floor that opens up into a sort of a balcony above the foyer, so we set up there and spent about an hour shooting. At least it was brighter there.
This was on top of the
In other news, I sent out a test version of Accountability this morning. I hope to get feedback on it over the next few days, and get a stable version out by next weekend (hopefully sooner). Keep your fingers crossed!