We had a rough start.
I waited approximately an hour and fifteen minutes for the G train (or “green limousine”) to arrive. It shouldn’t take that long. And it was horrible and completely nerve-wrecking. I left my apartment at 10:45 having to be at Shannon’s by 11:30 to help load the car then roll out at 12 to meet another photographer at his storage space in Chelsea then head to Harlem. I gave myself time to stop by Dunkin Doughnuts and get a small French Vanilla Iced Coffee (two sugars and milk) and a black raspberry doughnut then head to the station which is like two steps away. I’m waiting on the platform. I finish my coffee. I never finish my coffee. At least not in a timely manner…so I knew something was wrong. 11:40 rolls by and I’m panicking and decide to loose out on my fare and emerge from underground to give Shannon a call. I’m already 10 minutes late and still in Greenpoint and she doesn’t sound happy. And who would if you agreed to meet someone at a certain time and you’re not there yet…especially for a job. After a few minutes of trying to figure out other options, she tells me to just wait for the train so I go back down and give my card another swipe. I wait another half hour. It’s now 12 o’clock and we should’ve loaded the car and started to head out by now. I start walking toward the exit again. Then I hear the train on the opposing track come roaring toward us. This must mean that mine should finally show up sometime soon. I walk back to the other end of the track and wait impatiently. 12:17 and it finally arrives.
Two stops later, I powerwalk four blocks to her apartment and she’s already managed to bring everything down and pack the car herself and is waiting in the car. I jump in and we roll out immediately. Get to the storage space and we are totally on time. All is good and our nerves calm down. We share incredibly embarrassing stories along the way which makes me feel closer and more relaxed and everything seemed to be going on schedule. That is until we got the call that the other photographer we were supposed to meet was running late.
Not having any time to wait, we grab what we can use and improvise with and head out. We arrive at our subject’s apartment in Harlem pretty much when we are supposed to so we’re feeling good. Only our filmmaker was still en route. So he’s sort of late too. The thing about it is, in New York you can never be on time for anything. Not never, but definitely not usually. Traffic’s always a mess, train schedules don’t usually coincide with yours, trains will all of the sudden stop running and you don’t even realize it so you wait and wait and wait for nothing and any sort of meeting time usually needs a buffer and ends in “-ish”…as in 12:30-ish. Such is life here.
To make the long story short (too late for that huh?), we had an incredibly successful work day. Everything went smoothly, Zack and I were super dooper prepared with questions and we had the loveliest available light in the world to work with. Our subjects were amazing. Really incredible. And this was such a relief after the last time we did this which also happened to be the first time and we just took way too long and fumbled around too much. Today we actually looked like we knew what we were doing. And we all left with smiles on our faces, new friends, and a better sense of working as a team.
Reportage of the reportage:
I think it’d be really fun if at the end of this all we can look back at all of these behind the scene shots to see how far we’ve gone and remember what the process was like. My favorite are the second and third-to-last shots of our make-shift set.
