BoPBOpbOpBoPBoPbOP

Angene's home!

Angene spent the quarter in Botswana. (Her parents met Nhamdi on a plane coming to visit her). I grew up with her family. They lived about fifty feet away for the first six years of my life and we went to day care together. My daycare friends contributed crucially to my development, and those who are still involved in my life (such as Angene, her younger sister Augusta and my brother) remain crucial.

I am so excited.

My favorite was when Emily and I went to Boston and met up with Angene and Olivia at a swanky apartment. We sat on tulip chairs and ate olives and hummus and tried to communicate every possible thing. About three hours in, everybody gave each other resounding praise. Emily was so glad that I had real chicks with whom to pow wow at home and Angene and Olivia were relieved that the friends I had made at school were worthwhile. It’s times like that that I realize how fortunate I am for the people I have found.

And now the people so dear to me slowly become more near to me.

studio

Tomorrow is my last evening at the portrait studio. I am surprised now to see what a bond has grown between myself and my associates.  The monstrous task which we face every weekend together is to be credited.  We work as a team, all running at full steam to beat time and dissatisfaction.

These are the things that I have learned at that job:

1) I am primarily a kinetic learner.

2) techniques in achieving a positive attitude in clients and a goofy, genuine smile in their children.

3) speed.

4) command. The clients must always feel as though you have all the answers, know all the poses, angles, details. That you have the orders of business planned out, but can ultimately make it look natural, effortless. I don’t, but I fake it.

5) expectations are the enemy. If a couple has it in their head that all of their little children will smile patiently with their hands in their lap, they are bound to be disappointed, no matter how hard I try.

6) I have no delusions that I created art as a photographer on the clock. The constraints of the corporation for which I worked allowed me no such liberties, and the clientele had no interest in a portrait that wasn’t, you know like centered and stuff. But it made me acutely aware of everything within the viewfinder. This awareness allowed me to quickly snap the image that the client might buy while intentionally forgoing any image reflecting my own aesthetic. Though I couldn’t capture those moments, I know they were there and I can appreciate in that.

7) I must be a little dyslexic.

8) In order to put ourselves in the camera room day after day we are either addicted to the adrenaline or crazy.

one taxing hour on monday evening

I cut the pepper, that is what happened, it is no mystery to me the things that went afoul. But in order to explain the entire predicament, I must back up.

I decided to paint a wall of my room. Blue. I talked to my parents about it a little and they seemed to think that I would lose interest, but (perhaps to spite them) I perservered and the next day bought paint. Blue. Moved my bed, taped the edges, found rollers, brushes and the like. Dragged my mattresses and bed spread off my bed and in short, transformed my room into an inhabitable work site.

I painted around the edges and some patches in the middle for some reason. And then I made dinner—tacos for pa and I. I cut up the onion and jalapeno first and, perhaps as a cartooned celebratory gesture, licked my pinky finger. my tounge tasted the tingle—standard—but it didn’t stop. for an hour. what began as spice drew blood and made my face hot.  I am sure that I pawed at my lips and nose ignorantly, bewildered by this seemingly allergic reaction.

At long last, and in a tangle of frustration, I funnel into the shower because I didn’t know what else to do.  I guess I thought that I could wash it off, but the streams stabbed at the skin.  I could smell the oil from the pepper vaporizing and it made it hard to breathe. I find myself in my towel and seek help from dad just as he arrives.

He sprays benedryl on my face and tells me that I bought the wrong paint. It is enamel: shiny and roughly the color of painter’s tape. I look at my pathetic wall, as the dark, shiny splotches inform me of the rest of the mess. So I just stand there in my towel for about ten minutes allowing the stream of necessary tasks damn into a mental list. So I go ahead and get it together by putting on jammies and rolling into my obligations.

Famously

At the portrait studio, when I work there, I am famously untrained with the kiddies. It was easier at math camp in price hill when my prime objectives were limited to enforcing listening skills and discouraging racial slurs. Can do. But coaxing a smile from a five month old and a five year old is something quite out of my skillset.

10/28 Tristan: 2 First shoot ever.

“Hug the 2, Tristan. Give the 2 a big birthday hug”

I began to gesture in order to communicate the pose

Little Tristan clops forward in his airplane embroidered pants, running straight at my gestural hug. It would have made a good picture.

Once he got on his Barny costume he was all frowns.

11/15 Madden: 18 months  Fragile mood swings from charming smiles to tears aplenty

17 minutes into the shoot, I begin making jungle sounds

As it turns out, that was all she wanted to hear

11/21 Camden: 4  Screams “…but I’m SAD” whenever positioned on the background

Mom is unfazed by his tiny fists “We can’t leave until you smile”

“Actually…” (Mom’s eyes throw all the daggers) “…it has been 14 minutes of solid screaming. We are going to have to see another family”

11/29 Jaron: 6yrs  Tears and sadness.

Dad rolls his eyes goes “Every year…”

I shrug “Every day.”

Dad seems to feel better about his situation