NOT SHOOTING and A (TRUE) STORY

When I started this blog I was craaaazy busy shooting for a living and living to shoot.
There was no shortage of fresh images and projects (commercial and personal) to draw from.
A big, hot creative period. These things happen. These things end.

I wondered what I’d post those weeks when nothing much seemed to be happening (except a
bunch of meetings, post production, writing quotes, invoicing, phone calls, not-real-interesting
shoots and way too many e-mails).

This is one of those weeks. I feel like I’m chained to my desk.

I figure that a certain vibe and approach will show itself as tonyfoto/drool progresses. I am a proponent of
process, after all. I believe that fluidity, reaction, instinct and will are the ingredients of that (process). So
I’m going try to keep it loose, react, trust my instincts and post a new entry every Tuesday morning and see
where that leads.

I’m a pretty impatient guy but I realise that this drool thing will unroll over weeks and months. I don’t need
to say it all right now, do I? If I did then you wouldn’t need to come back once a week. Would you?

I’ve got a whole bunch of shooting coming up next week. Let’s see if anything happens there that I can bring here.
You never know.

Too many words.

Here’s too many pictures. And a story that goes along with a couple of them:

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(TRUE) STORY:

We were having lunch in Rosedale, Mississippi (pop: 2,414). The Double L Soul Food Kitchen, a plywood shack on
Main Street. After lunch (which was excellent) I asked Lordish Lewis, the cook and owner, if I could take some shots
of her. She said: “Sure”. While I was shooting her an old fellow came up. Lordish introduced him as her dad.

Right after we were introduced he told me, as he straightened his back: “I’m 72 years old. I got 12 children. I been a man”.

I said to him: “Your wife must be quite a woman to bring all those kids into the world”.

He replied: “It took 4 wives”.

Afterwards Lordish told me she’s got brothers and sisters she’s never met.

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BYEBYE (FUNNY)

Some people tell me I’m funny.

Example:
Me: “Do you think we should move over there?”
Some people: “You’re funny.”
Me: “ But I only said ‘Do you think we should move over there?’”
Some people: “It’s the way you said it”.

Funny, I guess.

I never really got it (being funny) until I met Christina, my assistant. I’m pretty sure that she’s funny the way I’m funny…..just the way she says stuff makes me laugh. Now I get it: funny.

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Christina and I have been funny together for a year and a half but that’s all ending. She’s quitting to go surfing and then she’s going on to do her own thing. I’m sure going to miss her funny.

I’ve only got about a million shots of her as she stood in, during assignments, for shot blocking and lighting.

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I’d shoot her, too, when we were stuck in some hotel/motel room after a shoot. Can’t stop taking pictures.
Here’s a couple of the first motel shots (early 2005, Cambridge, Lexus plant shoot) and the last (August 8th, 2006, in Toronto shooting venture capitalists).

(click images to enlarge)

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DANCEDANCEDANCE

Spent a bunch of days shooting dancers in dance outfits. What a scene.

There were 7 or 8 dancer/models per day, 2 makeup artists, 2 hairdo doers and a producer. Plus a choreographer to make sure the images would meet the stringent scrutiny of people in the dance world who, I’m told, are sticklers for correct form. Could be the coolest fashion shot in the world but if a foot’s turned wrong…..look out.

Here are some scenes from the studio and a 26 second video of me trying to get a dancer/model to scream.

Get, not make. Scream. (click to play/scream.mov)

(click image to enlarge)

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