i like to tell stories

in this building, more movies have been filmed then can be counted as well as the sopranos, sex and the city, fringe, ugly betty, gossip girl and 30 rock. i was there for 30 rock.

i did a time lapse of this shoot as well, the room was so tiny, nothing is ever as it is suppose to be or as imagined, shooting all 3 of them in here was a challenge to say the least, certainly knowing people needed a double page spread.

the best part of this shoot is what you cannot really see happening, me photographing Lady A was filmed by the Country Music Channel. so while i am photographing them and doing the time lapse, there are also 2-3 video cameras filming the entire situation simultaneously as well, pretty wonderfully absurd if you ask me. i enjoyed it, other then the sound guy sticking his boom into my shots a few times and the on camera video light almost throwing off the whole second shot, thankfully, i was being a pro and noticed it. i should roll with a pro video crew on all my shoots.

me, as seen on the Country Music Channel:

waffle house
250 clay targets at a premier facility
taught gray how to shoot clays (handle a gun for the first time, ever)
first round of ticks (the insects)
skee ball
air hockey
basketball
enough prize tickets for a toy water gun
go karts
(even a warning of removal from facility for excessive ‘bumping’)
mexican food
pulled over by police for driving downtown nashville without lights (gray)
*moments later, see same police officer in near shootout + high speed chase
hotel room with yet more insects (roach)
hotel room with yet more ticks
2nd waffle house
2nd mexican food
ticks in woods round 2
BP gas station sink showers to remove insects
NYC ER trip for insects

somewhere in all that, we managed to shoot:

Lady Antebellum & Billy Ray Cyrus for People Magazine as well.

an assignment as cool as those IS a vacation to me. i cannot think of a better reason to hit the road then assignments like these, even without the bells and whistles, i just love what i do.

*less then 3 minutes after the police officer let us go with a warning about our lights. (we thought they were on AUTO, oops). we saw the same police officer come screaming by us and stop short, less then 20 yards in front of us. there were at least 3 cop cars, the one we just ‘met,’ another in the center lane and one standing outside his car and next to a red taurus in a KFC drive thru lane. inside the KFC, i could see more officers standing around. then, without warning, i see the officer by the taurus in the drive thru start yelling and the man in the car leaning out the window a little as the car started rolling forward. the car was trying to flee and almost hit the officer, i saw the officer reach for his gun, try to get it out of the holster while also trying to not get hit or run over, before we knew it, the taurus was behind us, running from the police. if the officer had been able to get his gun out faster, i am sure we would of witnessed the shooting. we stopped just in time that the fleeing car flew by us and through a red light, then some 15 seconds later, all three police cars, including the one that had just pulled us over, chased after that taurus into the nashville night…. we went back to the hotel, our night was over.

i have only seen people reading an article with my images once before really. it was on a train, i looked over a persons shoulder and saw my image. the best part of this other story is that i never saw the magazine before or since, so it was the only time i even saw my assignment in that particular magazine.

it’s about a mile course, maybe a little more. i was walking it. i started at station #4. i shot a 0, i hadn’t had a zero station in over a year. it wasn’t even a hard station, couple quartering targets, nothing special, yet i just shot it all wrong. not a good way to start. i could hear thunder in the distance, then the rain started and then the lighting. the next few stations went just as poorly. i couldn’t get my brain around it, i shot the warm up perfect, not a miss, and the warm up wasn’t easy, yet now that it mattered, i couldn’t hit a thing. when we got to station #9, the furthest away from the start, the entire shoot was postponed due to lightning. great, i had to walk all the way back to the clubhouse, sit there for almost 2h, then walk all the way back to station #9, again, to start the tournament, again.

i had dropped 18 targets in the first 5 stations, abysmal. damn. when it started again, i would only drop 16 targets in 12 stands, twice as many stands, for less targets dropped, thank goodness for that storm.

video below not from the above stand, but stand #3, both Sat and Sun, as well as Sun stand #15. Stand #15 made everyone i saw shoot it turn around and walk away mad at themselves, when i walked away from my OX OO OO for a 1 of 6, it took a lot of effort to not throw my gun down and quit forever. a left to right diving crosser screaming across the tops of the brush and a crossing dropper from the right to left on report, both about 50 yards away.

a target is 110mm wide, or 4 & 1/4 inches by one inch tall. the targets below are only 90mm.

“good shooting jonathan” upon me hitting my first pair.
“bad shooting jonathan” upon me missing my next pair.
“good shooting jonathan” upon me hitting my final pair.

i wish i had gotten that on video. it helps when everyone on your squad is better then you and enjoys it. the first guy i follow in the video i got to shoot behind on day one, he was third, overall in the main event.