theodorepython asked: What exactly is it that you do?
EVERYTHING THAT IS PUT BEFORE ME.
But to be honest, I’m currently and technically labelled the Equipment Manager and In-House Gaffer of a boutique/high-end lighting and camera rental house in the West Village. We mostly work with fashion and portrait photographers: do a lot of Vogue, W, Interview, clothing campaigns, couture shit, real fancypants like stuff. I don’t dig on fashion in the least (as Oscar Wilde once stated: “…what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. From the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of health, every principle of hygiene.”), but I do like clever and interesting lighting quite a bit as I went to skool for furniture design (dual majored in the aforementioned and photography).
Anyway, outside of student films (which don’t pay anything) and music videos (which don’t pay you, period), fashion and portrait photography are the only places you’ll find interesting and creative lighting, which is what I truly enjoy. Unless of course it’s a Spielberg film … and, um, his lighting guy is a good buddy of ours and pretty much only Spielberg-level budgets can afford to rent our gear for three months straight.
/namedropping & pomposity
In addition to my majors in skool I’ve spent two decades doing construction, carpentry, plumbing, painting, locksmithing, welding, electrical work, electronics, cement/brick work, lathe and millwork, managed and repaired heavy-truck fleets, worked in hardware stores and I’m a skilled glazier, white-glove art handler, seamster (male version of someone that can sew?) and Ikebana-ist(?) … I’ve worked grip, dolly grip, electric, best boy, gaffer, worked in art department, built sets, I’ve run crews, generator op’d, was hired on full time to fix gear for a huge lighting/grip/electric rental house, worked as the sound guy for a comedy club and the adjacent live music venue, all sorts of things. Worked for a while at a bike shop, a headshop/record store, a boutique Japanese import place, did accounts receivable/payable at a trucking logistics firm. Had a job making pizzas once. Now I direct the dispersion of photons.
Which is to say that I pretty much SysAdmin the physical world. That’s what I do.
I’m aware that I’m coming off like a prat jack-of-all-trades, but evidently the people I work with and for think “eh’s a cool guy and doesn’t afraid of anything.”
My hobbies include but are not limited to: camping, cooking and baking, canoeing, skiing, hiking, fishing, mountain biking, motorcycle restoration, drawing and painting, model-building, skull collecting, boating, collecting vinyl and mid-century furniture and cowboy boots, reading, classical music, and archery.
