chair #5

I was doing a favor for a friend who has left the world of acute care nursing and opened a botox clinic. She wanted to do a photo shoot with a group of her clients, all dressed up--glamour shots, etc., and asked me to shoot it for her.

I should never be anyone's first choice for glamour shots. I consider myself a documentary photographer--showing it how it is. Glamour is about showing it as it isn't.

Here's an observation I made--all these women had plenty of natural beauty, but it wasn't enough for them. I would show them test shots and they would grimace and remark on how horrible they looked. It made me sad. I decided that after this, I would not do any more glamour shots for anyone ever.

I really just wanted to dip a toe into this topic, but now it's above my knees. Time to get out.

It was an outdoor shoot, in an alley, and it involved lots of waiting around on my part. I pulled the chair out and sat in it while I waited.

"Why is there a chair in the back of your car?"

That's why.

A few something elses too

Have I been taking pictures of anything other than an empty chair? Not really, although I am at least keeping the camera in the car in case something shows up. I went to the farmer's market last Sunday and took a shot of an orange. But that's about it.



I was scrolling through the webpage for our company, and saw a name that reminded me of someone I used to know a long time ago. Back in 1984, I was managing a clinic in Santa Clara, and she worked with me. When I moved up here to open a new clinic, she moved too--she had a boyfriend up here or something. Less than a year after I moved up here, my life fell apart and I quit the job, took some time off, and ended up enrolling in nursing school.

Anyway, the strange thing about this is that a few days ago I was making spaghetti, and her name popped into my head from out of nowhere. And then I see it again the next day at work.

So I looked the name up in the company directory and sent an email asking if she was the same person I had worked with all those years ago.

She was! She wrote back and told me that she works in the surgery department at one of the outlying hospitals. It's been 29 years since we last spoke! How about that?