The Shoot:


I told a co-worker of mine that I wanted to set up a portrait session with her. She's fair skinned, always wears black, has multiple tatoos and piercings, but has a laid-back, almost bubbly sense of humor; the combination of her pleasant personality coupled withher darkaurahas always fascinated me. I decided to shoot her against an abandoned warehouse decorated with "street art" (or graffiti in layman's terms).I showed up about 15 minutes early to set up some lighting equipment before Scarlett was to arrive. I arranged my monolights in a circle in a section of the front parking lot of an apparently abandoned building. When Scarlett and her fiance arrived, I walked over to greet them. We talked for a couple of minutes, then something unimaginable happened...





The Vandal:


Some idiot pulls off the road, uses the parking lot to do a U-turn, and (seemingly on purpose) runs over one of my lightstands in the process. After my lightstand hit the ground, he was smart enough to slam on the gas and get the hell out of dodge before I could reach the scene which was about25 feet away. So, I had the wonderful experience of watching my most expensive and beloved monolight (my White Lightning x2400), CSRB+ receiver,and relatively new Ebay beauty dish hit the ground after the lightstand collapsed. Let me tell you--not a good feeling. The good news is that the only piece of equipment that was irreparably damaged was the lightstand itself. The monolight fell onto a part of the parking lot that was missing pavement-- it fell into a soft patch of mud after the beauty dish took the brunt of the fall.The light was unharmed (aside from a few scratches). I was able to bend the beauty dish back into a reasonable shape (and we still used it on the shoot). Maher, my wonderful assistant, held the damaged stand throughout the entire shoot.








The Shot:


The evening wasn't completely ruined--we put the incident behind us, kept our eyes peeled for any more suspicious activity, and did what we came to do.





I ordered a new light stand this morning. And life goes on...