All my other careers; the advertising agency, teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, short order cook and teaching assistant, were long relegated to the rear view mirror before Mr. B. arrived on the scene. By the time he joined the family I had been doing photography as my sole source of income for something like ten years. I never stopped to think about how different our lives were from families in which the parents had "real" jobs. 9 to 5. Two weeks of vacation. Some sort of financial security. Not a lot of free time.
For most of his life at home I worked in the same office I do now. It's a converted garage and storage building that's situated about 12 steps from the front door of the house. Sometimes, when I was playing around with a camera in the office I'd remember that I had a "model" right across the walkway and I'd grab the camera and head into the house. B. was usually very patient and understanding. At least in his younger years. Of course, there were a few times in those teenaged years when he wasn't thrilled about being unpaid talent.
He always has had a very practical bent which is something I first became aware of when he was quite young. Maybe four or five years old. I was out working in the studio with a marketing director from Zach Theater. We were making photographs of cute, female models (young adults) dressed up as Santa's elves to promote the perennial holiday season productions. The marketing director was also a family friend and, on the spur of the moment he decided that the perfect addition to one of our shots would be to have a cute, young child kiss one of Santa's elves on the cheek.
I told the ad guy, Jim, that a house policy was that we couldn't push Mr. B. into being talent for anything he didn't want to do and that, additionally, he would negotiate his own terms having learned early on that all clients have budgets and no one should give away time, talent or content for free (if only I had learned that lesson I would have saved a lot of time by not blogging....).
I went in the house to ask B. if he would come out and listen to Jim's proposal for an ad. He was happy to. Jim walked him through the concept and then my four or five year old exclaimed, "Kiss a girl??? No way. Sorry." Jim was persistent and started offering the kind of payment he thought would appeal to a young child. He suggested that after the shoot we could all go to Amy's Ice Cream (an Austin legendary ice cream shop/the best!!!) and he could get anything he wanted.
B. smiled and said, "I can already get that from my parents. No deal." To this day I'm not sure any amount of bribery would have been enough to move him off dead center. I was proud though that he stuck to his guns and didn't crumble. He politely excused himself and went back into the house. I made a note that in the future we'd always offer him scale if we asked him to be talent on a real shoot...
Most kids have parents who go away to work. When the kids get older they also go away to school. Everyone meets back at the house in time for dinner. Not so at our house. If I wasn't booked I'd be in the office doing paperwork or marketing or something else to move the whole enterprise of photography along. Most days either me or my assistant was there to meet the school bus in the afternoon. I was at home/in the office on both occasions of my kiddo breaking an arm at school (3rd grade). His mom was working a "real" job in downtown by then so I was usually on call for school emergencies. Each time I was over to his school in minutes. Single digit minutes. On one broken arm (falling from the top of the jungle gym...) episode my team and I were in the middle of a shoot. We were using our large living room in the house. We had three or four people from the ad agency, a stream of models coming and going, a make up person and my cracker jack assistant, Renae.
In the middle of the shoot Renae walked over and handed me the phone. "Can you take a message?" I asked. "No! You'll want to take this call." She said, emphatically. She was right. It was the elementary school principal calling to let me know that B. had possibly broken his arm at recess. I was out the door so fast it was like a cartoon. I got to the school. Evaluated B. Splinted his arm with a magazine (Thank You! Boy Scouts of America. And thanks for the first aid merit badge!!!) and rushed him to the hospital. Platinum level parenting service. The pediatric orthopedic surgeon on call was someone I knew from the pool. And someone B. also knew and was comfortable with (kids the same age).
I was thrilled to secure the volunteer job of official photographer for ten years in a row for B.'s summer swim team at our club. I did the group shots of 150+ kids ranging from 4 to 18, and I photographed all the kids swimming their events at the swim meets. It was a big job but I got to watch every race B. and his friends swam... and it was a blast.
Later, once he was in high school, B. took a semester of video production and video editing. We did a role reversal. Now he was the expert and I was the student. He fixed more of my videos for clients with a keen eye and a strong arm on the tiller than I would really like to admit.
For the last three years of high school he ran cross country. I never missed a meet. I also never missed getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning and driving him to 6:30 a.m. cross country practice at Zilker Park. I really had to. My dad did the same for me when I swam in middle school and high school. Only back then our workouts started at 5:30 a.m. Paying it forward? At least after delivering him to cross country workouts I could head straight to the pool and begin my own exercise...
We talked often about freelance work, photography work, video work, writing, and how all the finances worked. He paid attention. If there is one thing I think I taught him it's that you can do whatever you like in life and you can figure out how to make it successful, if you want to. Sometimes it's up to doing hard work and long hours, sometimes it's more important to be a good negotiator, but mostly it's critical to believe in yourself and to set boundaries for those with whom you work. Good relationships with clients and crew are the glue that binds everything together at work.
I have mountains of photos of the kid but I'm very careul about what I post because I know his privacy is important to him. He's not a typical millennial. You won't find much of him on social media. He's okay being mostly off the grid.
I'm happy he moved back to Austin after his four years at universities, split between the North East U.S. and also Seoul, S. Korea. It means we get to see him at least every Sunday evening for a family dinner. More often if we have something special to celebrate. Or if I can wrangle him for a weekday lunch halfway between our houses. With a few exceptions we haven't missed a Sunday in at least three years. And always we're talking about my work and his work. And where marketing is headed. And how photography has changed. And how tech companies are using images. And, sadly or happily (not sure), I've come to grips with the realization that he's far smarter and more capable than I was at his age. More grounded and focused. A better skier, runner and rock climber too. Gosh, now I feel like such a fitness slacker...
The image at the top was taken on one of those easy Summer afternoons when I stepped into the house to grab a cold drink from the fridge. The light was coming through the double French doors in the dining room and I picked up the Hasselblad camera that was usually sitting on the dining room table, figured the exposure in my head and asked him to stand still. I shot five frames and then we were both off again, back on our own projects. It was nice to be around for the photo opportunities. It's easy to miss stuff; important stuff, if work is always the priority.
Nice now to have a kind, bright and well launched kid. (oops. Adult). Wouldn't trade that feeling for all the Leicas in the world.
Tech: Available light. Tripod. Medium format camera. Short telephoto lens. Tri-X film. Scanned from the negative here in the office.
