The Wandering I

Still catching up …

Last Tuesday was the shooting day for The New Brunswick Chapter of Flashes of Hope for the month of September and we were going to be shooting in The Cancer Institute of New Jersey [CINJ] where the a Pediatric Outpatient Clinic is located.  Once each quarter we set up at CINJ for a shoot while the other two months of the quarter we do our shoots in the Bristol Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.  I was in a jam in August when the photographer who was scheduled to do the FOH shoot got a paying gig at the last minute and had to bail [and that's one of the conditions I'm very clear about with all the shooters!  If a paying job comes in, they should take it and I'll deal with getting someone else for the FOH shoot.  It is, after all, a volunteer shoot!].  So I asked the photographer who was already scheduled for the shoot in September to come in and do the August shoot.  So I took the shoot last week.

I have the sense that most people have no idea what an incredible joy it can be for a photographer to be able to do one of these shoots!  I guess most people think that volunteer work is something you do because you’re supposed to do it and that it’s not supposed to provide any joy.  I figure it just clarifies the idea that I’ve had for years that photographers and other artists are cut from a VERY different cloth.  I LOVE doing these shoots and come off of every single one of them with such an unbelievable high that I can just float over/under/around/through [DAMN, that just brought back an old Lucky Strikes commercial! - why can't I let go of some of this foolishness that I have hanging out in my brain so that I'd have more space for important things!] the next several days!  When I see these kids and thier families light up and brighten up right in front of me, there’s just nothing that compares!

The first little boy we shot was a 10,000 watt kleig light.  As soon as I picked up the camera and pointed it at him, the entire lobby at CINJ was blindingly bright.  I’d lower the camera and he was just another happy kid, then I’d point it at him and I’d have to put on my sunglasses again!  For some reason, I kept thinking of a totally sober WC Fields, he just had that kind of attitude!

Then there was the little girl who quite simply had all of us wrapped around her little finger.  Mom and Grandmom kept saying that she didn’t like to have her picture taken but she had them totally fooled!  She was just playing along with that idea but loved having us all under her thumb … after about twenty minutes of coaxing her to come over to the “studio” space, she finally went with her mom and then just hid in her mom’s arms.  But every once in awhile, I’d see this little face with these really clear eyes looking out at me and I could see what she was thinking …

I have got to be the luckiest guy in the world to be able to spend time with these kids!!

Nat

Somewhere in rural New Jersey