Circles and Straight Lines

It’s 3:51, on the morning of a 3-day trip to Las Vegas.  Sometimes it’s hard to accept 3am as really being “morning”, but I know that on a technicality it actually is.  The fact that I have a large tumbler of coffee in front of me further solidifies the fact that it’s the start of another day, as opposed to when I laid down 3 hours ago, thus having officially separated yesterday from today.

We have an assignment documenting the amazing work of one of our clients over the next couple of days.  And though my mind is far from calm, I’m thoroughly enjoying the silence of my office, the only sound being an occasional gurgling of the coffee maker and the slight hum of the computer monitor.  The bags and cases are loaded, boarding passes printed, and in a few hours, we’ll be at Denver International, stepping onto a plane.  And two hours after that, onto a whirlwind.

Spending the last days of 2012 in Arizona was a time to soak in the warmth of 65-degree, sun-filled weather, family, desert palms, and the combination of a seemingly endless grid of streets mixed with inner city mountains making up my home town of Phoenix.  A place that feels woven into the daily fabric of my life and the way I see my work.

View west from Coolidge, AZ

It was also a time to reflect on the many great projects we got to photograph during the year, the places we were able to visit, people we got to meet, new friends we made, and of course finally, on a tragedy in a Connecticut classroom, that as a father of two young sons, felt more personal to me than any of the other recent and heartbreaking events that have become too frequent an occurrence.

Looking to the new year, with high hopes for both professional and personal growth, January’s calendar looks like a promising start with projects scheduled in several states, as well as in our beautiful Colorado.  But I also carry hopes for our economy, the health of our society, our capacity for love, the education and safety of our youth, and an upcoming year of peace.

View west from Florence, AZ

Gaining another hour of sleep per night, this summer, would be great too.

It’s the 7th day into a 9-day California trip, and after some long, but fantastic days in our first Los Angeles visit this week (will be back again in a couple of days) we were scheduled to drive up the coast to Santa Cruz and San Francisco for client meetings and personal visits.  In younger days I’d made this trip back and forth via the Pacific Coast Highway, a number of times.  I figured the opportunity, and therefore obligation, was there to go up this way again, even if it added hours to my drive.  Hours that were well-spent reconnecting with a scenery and strings of uninterrupted ideas, not visited in years.

The 450+ miles of coastline share at once both the incredible beauty and danger of narrow, winding roads with hypnotic views that almost feel like from another world.

Pacific Coast Hwy, CA

Pacific Coast Hwy (detail), CA

Pacific Coast Hwy, CA

One often tends to find comfort (or at least amusement) in the smallest, and otherwise most insignificant things, to occupy one’s time and mind during downtime.  Especially when sitting at the airport gate after arriving 3 or 4 hours too early.

People-watching is an old pastime but does tend to get less interesting and less effective the older and more jaded I get.  Browsing the gift shops, spending money on over-priced gum, souvenir refrigerator magnets, or junk food.  There’s always watching the captions on the nearby TV, and if one is at McCarren or Reno/Tahoe Int’l (as I am now), you’ll have a continuous soundtrack of slot machine music and coins dropping in the background to accompany the CNN talking heads.  Window-hypnosis, as I call it, happens involuntarily after 8 days of near-sleepless days associated with the assignment.

Of course the most dependable form of unplanned time-consumption can be found in the untangling of the white earbud set that comes with the iPod/iPhone.  I’m convinced that the wires move on their own when we’re not watching and weave some of the world’s most complex knots of white labyrinth.  This endeavor, though relatively new in our history, is already a time-honored tradition that will last for years to come.  As I write this entry, I am fresh off my most recent bout with the ever-twisted clump of wires.  The good thing is that in my two-hour flight back home, I can be assured that when I sit in my seat and pull out the iPod again I’ll be good for another 10 minutes off the flight time, as I deal with today’s version of the Rubik’s Cube.  And like the Rubik’s Cube of my childhood, I have yet to master the activity, but am confident of the many future opportunities I’ll have to practice.

There’s nothing like the day before a week-long project out of state.  Along with going over all the logistics like making sure the car rental information is ready, airline tickets have been checked-in, site contact information is backed up and accommodations are set, are the multitudes of equipment goings-over.  Are the packs working as they should?  And their corresponding heads/cords/cables?  Are the cameras, iPad and laptop charged?  Are the cases of CF cards and hard drives packed?  Will the Pocket Wizards be on speaking terms, or will they decide to give each other the silent treatment in the middle of the shoot, as they often do?

And the countless expendables: rolls of gaffers tape, black plastic, batteries, etc.  Most of these items generally sit off to the sidelines (or in the trunk of the car) during the shoot, ready to be called in at a moment’s notice like a backup quarterback waiting for a chance to play in the game.  Being a natural light shooter, most of the time the equipment is there for piece of mind, because I know that when I don’t bring it, I will need it.  It’s Murphy’s Law and at my age, I’ve made peace with it and no longer tempt fate like I might’ve in my wild, younger days.

I also make peace with the idea that for the 48 hours prior to leaving, sleep will be reserved for the plane, because once you’re in your seat things take a life of their own and you are now in improvise mode should you have overlooked something, or if equipment goes down.  Of course once you hit 38,000 feet, everything looks different out the window.  You tend to stop thinking of all that could (and hardly ever does) go wrong, and you realize how little you actually are in the whole beautiful scheme of things.