Truth-telling and the small-town cop

I have a strong disdain for people who wield power inappropriately. Like the people at the License Bureau. They hate sitting all day on their boot, which they know is widening by the minute. Their kids are messing with Satanic cults, and the big hair on their heads is bringing them down. So they take it out on me. Worst of all: They look happy when they're doing it. "I'm sorry, ma'am," says the clerk, her best Shining smile in place. "But looks like you don't have the right documents. And, oopsy daisy, looks like we're closing. Guess you'll just have to come back tomorrow and stand in line for an hour all over again."

Then there are cops like the guy in Mantua who pulled me over the other day.

Mantua, Ohio, in case you don't know it, is this teeny tiny sweetheart of a town -- pop., 962 -- in the middle of rolling hills and cornfields on the way to Lake Erie. Its claim to fame is the Potato Festival. One year, the town tried to get in the Guinness Book of World Records by using a (clean) cement mixer to make the world's largest pile of mashed potatoes, which the City Council dumped in the middle of the street.

So every now and then I go to Mantua, where there's this great physical therapy practice. I get this funky think in my knee, you see, and the only physical therapist I trust moved her practice from suburban Cleveland to Mantua. And so every now and then, I enjoy the half-hour drive along the two-lane, 45-mph highway, which turns into a 25-mph Main Street for about five seconds. I take a right into Edy Brenner's Physical Therapy, get my fix, then head back out onto the highway.

This time, as I leave Edy's, I hightail it a little too fast, a little too soon for the cop coming at me from the other direction. Soon as I see him, I know I'm in for it. Argh. I didn't have on my seatbelt either, which I quickly fastened as he whipped around and came after me.

Now I had just the night before seen the movie, "Thelma and Louise," which if you haven't seen in awhile, you must see, if for no other reason than looking at Brad Pitt's 23-year-old tush in faded jeans. If you remember, Thelma and Louise, and Brad who hid out for awhile in Louise's bed, were all running from some pretty stinky dudes, including a whole posse of small-town cops.

So this movie is fresh in my mind, as I pull over and start fumbling for all my various official documents while sneak-peaking into my rearview mirror while this cop whips around behind me, gets out of his car and stands up. Middle-aged, paunchy, and BORED, he actually hitches up his pants like they do in the movies. He walks around the back of his cruiser, opens the trunk and pulls out one of those big ranger hats. He pulls it down on his head, adjusting the front of it, like Thelma's would-be captors.

"Oh, God, am I'm doomed," I think, especially because I am guilty.

Like a black cat on Halloween, he sashasys up to my window.

"You know why I pulled you over, ma'am?"

Actually, I do.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"I clocked you going 45 in a 25."

"I know, but I just came out of the physical therapy place, and I saw the sign up ahead that said 45 and that's what I did. I didn't think about that small stretch of highway between the turn into Edy's and the highway."

Then: "Were you wearing your safety device, ma'am?"

Now this is one of those make-it-or-break-it moments. If I tell the truth, I could get two tickets. But if say I was wearing it, then I'll be lying, which I pride myself on never doing. Ever since I lied to my boyfriend, Barry, that time when I was 18, and this other guy, Mark, stole a kiss from me at a party, and Barry asked me, "Did Mark kiss you?" and I said "No", and he said, "I saw Mark kiss you" I decided I would never lie again.

And so I tell the truth, and then some.

"No, sir, I wasn't. I put it on as soon as I saw you. But you know, sir, when I had little kids, I used to put on my seatbelt first thing, because I was teaching them. But now I don't have little kids anymore, and I forget because our generation didn't wear seat belts when we were little. It always takes me about five minutes to get down the road and then I remember."

"You got any priors, ma'am?"

More ouchy truth. But I gotta do it. He's The Man with the power to send me to Death Row.

"There was that one time when I got pulled over for running a stop sign. The police officer said I rolled through it. But I have to tell you I don't think I rolled through it. I think I stopped, but not enough for her. And so when I went to court, they told me I could plead all these different ways and I just went ahead and pled guilty."

"All right, ma'am." (You can be quiet now.) "Stay right here."

I sit for those interminable five minutes when you wonder how you're going to afford a $150 traffic ticket, much less the points that are already racking up with your insurance because you have teenagers. You're watching all the cars passing and rubber-necking to see who the ditz is that got caught going 45 on the 100 yards of road called Main Street. And then he comes back to the window.

"I'm going to tell you something, ma'am. I saw you put on your seat belt when you saw me. If you had lied to me, I was going to give you a ticket. But since you told me the truth, well ma'am, you just slow down a a little bit and make sure you're always wearing your safety device. Have a good day there, ma'am."

I drove off from that cop that morning, feeling proud of both of not just myself for telling the truth, but him, for being a good cop willing to listen to another human being's story. Because of how the police officer treated me, I drove off, not only wanting to be a better driver, but a better person. That is what real authority is all about.

Bringing Up Mommy: Hair dye and the natural woman

I'm one of those women who prides herself on choosing breast over bottle, flip-flops over stiletto and Boca over beef.

I don’t wear polyester or mascara.

Perhaps most significantly, I never did, nor was I ever going to, dye my hair.

Rather, I was going be like my 70-year-old friend, Carol. A beautiful, accomplished and confident professor at a local liberal-college, she wears a proud, gray braid down her back as a badge of defiance against a phony world.

Ah, but every 100-percent-cotton devotee has her day of reckoning. Mine came four years ago, in the fall of 2006, when I went to a snappy, new hairdresser for a little trim in preparation for my niece's wedding.

"See any gray back there?" I asked.

I already knew about the tiniest strands of gray framing my face.
As for the rest of my head, I was prepared for her to say something back-handedly affirming, like "Wow. For as old as you are, it's amazing how little your hair has grayed."

Instead: "I'd say you've got about 50 percent coverage back here."

I grabbed the hand mirror, which lay bare the truth and a mass of glop that was the color of Ohio in February.

My values, my bragging rights and all that talk about Oil of Olay being a racket disintegrated like Obama's presidency. I must have whimpered involuntarily.

"You know we could very easily fix this," she said.

I was too stunned to take in too much of what she said after that, so much prattle about low lights and high lights and permanent vs. semi-permanent. I got out of there as fast as I could, hurrying to gather in the opinions of my village:

• "You'll feel better about yourself if you do,” said the vainest of my blood sisters, whose hair is bottle black.

• "You might feel better about yourself if you don't," said my youngest sister, who makes her own alfalfa sprouts and yogurt.

• "You will be a disgrace to your Southern upbringing if you don't," said my middle sister, who emerged from the womb with a shock of gray in front.

• But the most dramatic, and the most effective, comment came from my then 18-year-old son. "Mom! You have always been your own person! You don't have to be one of 'those women'! You can be who you want to be, just by being you! I like you the way you are! Just be yourself!"

For awhile, my son won. For two more years, in fact, I lived with the gray that was, on the one hand, a public embracing of aging, and on the other hand, beginning to make my particular face look really bad. Some people look really beautiful as they age, their thick black hair framing their face like the contrast button on PhotoShop. My thin, wispy hair, on the other hand, looked like the dirty broom you use in the garage, a crisscross of brown leaves and grit from the car's oil pan.

Much as I was OK with telling people my age, I realized I was not OK with looking like a dead person. I didn't feel old when I looked in the mirror. I felt ugly.

Somewhere along the way, then, I began to mix up this paradigm I’d held so tight.

I came to believe that the personal beauty I'd always refused to be slave to, is valuable, that the search for it doesn’t stop as we age, that wanting to look beautiful is not denying the natural process or the reality of aging.

And so I did it. One sunny day during the summer of 2008, my new hairdresser, who is really a hairdresser/therapist, who totally gets me, painted semi-permanent ash all over my head and blonde highlights on top.

I couldn't believe how pretty I looked when she was done, not just my hair, but my face, my whole being.

And now? Now, two years after that first dye job, I can’t imagine not dyeing my hair. I may one day stray from my hairdresser and do my own henna that my alfalfa sprouts friends keep telling me about. For now, I have come to appreciate the smell of ammonia the morning after.

Synchronicity and artistic pursuit

My No. 1 adviser suggested three lenses for my upgraded photo arsenal. They are lenses I hesitate to name for fear of losing anybody who doesn't talk photo, which I barely do, let me assure. But for people who want to know, J2 suggested the 24-70 mm 2.8 for best-of-show/all-around lens; the 85 mm 1.4 for my No. 1 portrait lens; and the 70-200 mm 2.8 for Jazz Fest, sports pictures and all those shots I can't get when it gets too dark.

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Now we're talking about a lot of money. And we're also talking about carefully choosing from among dozens of options, which I had been researching for weeks, months, years, my whole life. And then today became the day when I HAD to buy SOMETHING, because the main lens I'd been using (an 18-200 mm 3.5) was malfunctioning and I had a job to shoot.

I woke with a plan, to buy that main all-around lens, the 24-70 2.8. But I was still concerned whether this was the right lens or not.

So I walked into Campus Camera, and I asked the one guy in there who is actually nice AND smart (the others are that cocky breed of ego-y yuk that shows up in every artistic venue):

"If you had to pick a No. 1 lens, what would it be?"

Without a single prod of provocation from me, he said "The 24-70 2.8."

Game, set, match.

Herein are the results of my first day shooting with my new sharp and lovely color 24-70 2.8.

Ambient light

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” --Howard Thurman, American theologian, clergyman and activist, 1900-1981.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have been semi-launching a photography business for several years now. Today is the day when I push forward on the throttle, as I begin plunking down an unholy amount of money on top-of-the-line equipment I have been reviewing for months. This is just as I am getting lots of requests for my pictures.

All good, right?

Ah, but the id or the super ego or the devil, whichever you want to call that naysayer entity that co-exists with your guardian angel, will try to have its way when you are headed toward the light, which is to say away from the dark, which is sometimes more familiar. And here is what the dark was saying to me yesterday as I made final plans for today's spending event:


1. You have never spent this much money at one time. You once bought a new car and a house. But it was WITH your husband. And he signed the papers. How can you possibly make this important decision all by yourself?

2. As soon as you lay out all that cash at Campus Camera, you'd better be prepared to announce in a loud, albeit falsetto, voice: "This is what I want to do. This is how I want to spend my time." And you damned well better be good at it.

3. Will you make back your investment? Or is this really an expensive hobby, a self-induuuuuuulgence, disguised as a business? Wouldn't the Family, and the World, be better served if you instead took all that money and dry-walled the basement, or sent your daughter to a small private college where your daughter really wants to go instead of the cheaper (free because her daddy teaches there), larger public institution here in town? Hm, Mom?

4. Take a look at the Internet and the hundreds upon trillions of wedding and portrait photographers who will always have a bigger lens, a better camera and more tutorials than you. Can you possibly compete?

So yeah. So yesterday, I FB-posted some of these anxieties to Joe Jackson of Rock Hill, SC, an amazing photographer, www.joejackson.zenfolio.com (sorry this blog won't let me hyperlink yet again!) and one of my emerging fav peeps in the world, whose very approach to work and life embraces all that I believe in. His photos are warm. He is warm. His photos are genuine. He is genuine. His photos are generous. He is generous.

I used to work with Joe at The State newspaper in SC where I learned a lot of what I know about photography. I was hired as a words person, a writer, a reporter. But for every story I wrote, I was assigned a photographer. And I watched them with great interest and fascination, perfecting my own understanding of photography, which dates back to when I was 19 and a traveling studio photographer, shooting, believe it or not, Shriners, for Shriner yearbooks.

I learned a lot about form and composition and umbrella lights, shooting large Shriner families in a studio setting. I learned how to handle a 35 from one of the other Shriner photographers, a freelancer who taught me the rudimentaries with a manual Leica and a hand-held meter. I also learned from my photo j classes in journalism school. But, truly, it was these guys at The State newspaper -- Ginger Pinson, Linda Stelter, Anne McQuary, Jeff Amberg and Joe who taught me about getting the picture to match the story, about capturing the moment, about not invading private space while completely invading it, about staying out of the picture, existentially. The picture is not about my ego, but about the subject.

I folded this knowledge into my own creative expression and a few Nikons here and there. And then one day I had an exhibit at Starbucks. And then one day I started landing wedding and portrait jobs. And then one day I began needing new equipment -- and mentors, which everybody, even Mother Teresa, needs. You can be a teacher, even, and still need somebody to teach you. How do you otherwise get better? Ah, but you've got to find the right mentor, somebody who speaks your language, and if s/he doesn't, well you have to keep moving with patience despite your impatience. It's like choosing a therapist, or a husband.

I tried a few before I found Joe. I found a guy in Cleveland online, who promised great tutorials. I drove all the way to the west side of Cleveland in a snow storm. He did know a lot about light. But his photos were way too artificial looking for my tastes. I found a camera store clerk in Aurora who takes wedding photos. I learned some from her, about light, again, always about light, until it became clear that wedding photography for her was a formula. She was burned out. I tried a few others, who were preachy or ego-y or downright mean. They'd been working stiffs for decades. What did I think, that I could pick up a digital camera and start shooting?

And then I saw Joe's stuff online. And here's the thing: People keep telling me what they like about my portraits is how warm they are, how much personality I capture in the photos. I think it's because I like people. Simple as that maybe, and I say this with all humility. This is what I saw when I revisited Joe's pictures online for the first time in 15 years. I could feel Joe's warmth behind the lens. And so I ventured forth. I FBed him a question about one of his pictures and the lens he used. And he answered in 7 paragraphs. And then I asked him another question. And he answered in 10 paragraphs. And I kept asking, even as I apologized for taking up too much of his time, and he kept answering, by telling me he was pleased to help me. He even went so far as to have a phone conversation one day with me on his entire lunch break.

And so yesterday, when I found the Dark Knight sitting on my shoulder, I went to Joe with my anxieties, to which he replied:

"One of the best things about FB (and the internet in general) is that it allows you to see others' work. One of the worst things about FB (and the internet in general) is that it allows you to see others' work.
I am one of the world's worst offenders when it comes to the sin of obsessing over the perceived chasm of "quality" between my pictures and what I see on other photographers' sites. Here's my advice:
1) Step away from the internet. Resist the urge to compare. Feel free to look and ask if the purpose is to increase your own knowledge, but step away once you begin feeling either seriously inferior or superior. Both extremes are fatal to your mental and professional health.
2) (This one is listed at the risk of sounding evangelical, but you asked.) Are you using your God-given technical, personal, and business skills in a way that ultimately reveals the beauty of creation and celebrates our connections to each other? Or put another way - does your art lift people and their spirits, or does it diminish? As long as you're doing your share of the lifting, I'm good with it.
3) Clients come to us asking for pictures, but what we actually have to sell is "the experience." If your client walks away from the session feeling like both of you had a genuinely good time, THAT is what they will remember and share. I know you. So I know for a fact that one reason people come to you is because you make good pictures. But I also know that people come to you because they already know, or have heard, that they will have a good time with some one who will be warm, funny, and engaging.
4) And finally, if one goal is to make money at this - is there a market for what I do? Apparently there is. Regardless of your self-perception, or maybe in spite of it, people like what you do. And they will give you money to do it. Accept it and be happy. If you seriously entertain thoughts of inferiority, those feelings will encroach upon your interactions with your clients. When your personal demons shout "You people are nuts for spending money on me when you should be hiring this other photographer instead," your clients will hear the message loud and clear. Do not give the demons a voice.
Want to expand your technical skills or explore other styles? Fine. Knock yourself out. But do it for your own personal or professional growth, NOT in order to sate a false feeling of inferiority.
So...my assessment is this: you're well-covered on points #2-4. Keep working on #1 to banish the demons, and you'll be great. Or just ask me and I'll remind you."

The dark side is always there, hovering. But the light is where we belong. Thanks for being my light, Joe. And I didn't even need a flash. Campus Camera, here I come.

1st-place photos at the Randloph Portage County Fair

I won my first photo contest, at the Portage County Randloph Fair! Two blue ribbons for Mardi Gras Indian (portrait category) and MudBowl (sports). Fun! And thanks for the $5 prize money!!! A Starbucks latte, and then some!