The Shoot, The Vandal, and the Shot

[Sean Setters]

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...

[neuroanatomist]

I read about the incident on your Flickr page. My condolences, and also congrats on a great shoot nevertheless!


Out of curiousity, since it was a parking lot, were there security cameras? If so, a police report might result in some consequences for the vandal (even though it was just property damage, when caused by a vehicle that probably escalates the severity).


--John

[Steve U]

Nice eyes, nice shot, curse those jealous strobists.

[ddt0725]

Beautiful shot, Sean of a beautiful girl! I am sorry to hear you had to go thru what you did to get the shot though!


People make choices everyday on what type of person they want to be. It just boggles my mind that someone would choose to be this type of human being and have so little regard for another persons property! I know people do alot worse but even stuff like this just disgusts me! Just driving away wouldn

[Sean Setters]

Out of curiousity, since it was a parking lot, were there security cameras? If so, a police report might result in some consequences for the vandal (even though it was just property damage, when caused by a vehicle that probably escalates the severity).

From what I can tell, it's an abandoned building. The graffiti has been there for years, I think. So, no security cameras...

[btaylor]

What a tool. At least it was only the light stand that was damages, could have been much worse.

[Sean Setters]

What a tool. At least it was only the light stand that was damages, could have been much worse.

Very true. The strobe, CSRB+, beauty dish, and flash tube could have all been damaged beyond repair. I was quite fortunate. I still wish I had been close enough to see his tags as he sped off...

[Daniel Browning]

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

Sorry. That was me and my friend. I heard about your photo shoot and wanted to come watch you work. But as soon as I got there, I remembered that the car I was driving was stolen (I'm pretty good with a Slim Jim), and I realized that you probably wouldn't appreciate the extra blue/red lights and background distraction if the police caught up with me there. Not to mention the muzzle flashes. So that's when I did a U-Turn and noticed that your WL x2400 monolight didn't seem to be working. I was going to pull up next to it and check the settings for you, but I knew it probably just needed a little bump to get it going again, so I ran it over (plus, I was drunk). I think that fixed it, because I could see you running towards me and shouting your thanks. Then the thought occurred to me that you might think I had bad breath, due to the odor from the body in the trunk, so I burned rubber getting out of there.


Maybe next time []

[Steve U]

See there's two sides to every story.


I thought that whole "vandal" thing was a little over the top. Are you OK Daniel?


I was little suspicious of your story, specially when you started out with "me and my friend," you were by yourself weren't you?


Heh heh.[]

[Sean Setters]

I was little suspicious of your story, specially when you started out with "me and my friend," you were by yourself weren't you?

I don't know....does a life sized cardboard cut out made from a self portrait count as a passenger? I mean, if the cut out was in the front passenger seat, then he'd still technically be "by himself," I suppose...