So a couple months ago, Meg and I got a zipcar and drove out to a construction site in NJ to shoot a real estate developer for a weekly national magazine. We walked around with the guy and the writer and the guy from the PR company for two hours while they showed us around the place and gave us the hard sell.  To me, none of that mattered very much, you don’t need to sell me, I’m just here to take pictures.  It was interesting enough, but mostly I felt bad for Meggers having to carry a backpack with an AcuteB in it up and down many floors of stairs with a hardhat on.

Once the tour was over and it was photo time, it became clear that the subject wasn’t too keen on getting his picture taken.  I snapped a couple of test shots to see if everything was working and my exposure was good and already he was saying, “Ok, are you done yet?”.  I tend to think that I work pretty fast, all things considered, but I’m not really a one shot plus safety newspaper shooter either.  I need time to coax my subjects a little to get what I want.  Especially when they’ve got walls up.

In the end, I had enough time and got enough material to work with in a couple different settings. I thought the portraits came out well, but it took weeks for the photo editors to make decisions and then I went to Florida for the Shuttle and the to Japan. So I emailed my contact yesterday and it turns out that the story isn’t going to run in the magazine afterall. Not sure what happened. Maybe the story didn’t gel, or the subject didn’t like the angle, or there was no space because of articles about the bailouts.

It’s still a little frustrating. I mean, I did a good job, and I have no control over the the images, and I’m still getting paid, but no one will ever see the portraits which is sad and kinda lame.  Just needed to vent a little.