Little company, big steps, and a few small stumbles.

Saturday, August 21st, 2010.  The job was a big one.  In fact, the job was our biggest one yet as a company: three employees and fourteen hours' video and photo coverage.  The mere thought of getting up at 6:30am to make an 8:30am go-time was daunting, but we're professionals!  We knew the work involved and we committed ourselves to it.  We were going to do the best job anyone's ever done on this green earth, by George, and nothing was going to get in our way.

Except.

1.  Sleeping through my initial 6:30 alarm and waking up at 6:55.
2.  One of my partners having something roughly resembling the European Black Death Plague virus and throwing up almost as soon as we began our trip north (he eventually stopped, but was under the weather the whole day long).
3.  The motorbike cop who lasered me at fifteen over I-5's speed limit and felt a $287 speeding ticket would improve my day (My partner riding shotgun, the un-sick one, told me oh-so-helpfully after the fact "Oh, I thought you saw him there."  Thanks Kevin; I didn't).

  We ended up making our shoot by 8:45 -- fifteen minutes behind schedule, but not bad, considering the massive amounts of delay and disaster that plagued the trip up.  We got in place, got set up, and began the longest day of my working career as a videographer.  Around 10:30pm we finally wrapped up, said our goodbyes, and called it a day.

  The clients were fantastic -- not a wedding-bound couple, actually, but a Hispanic couple with a three year-old daughter destined for her Catholic baptism and after-party.  The shoot itself, once the shoot itself finally began, went smoothly.  We took thousands of photos and hours and hours of video, and we're going to produce some seriously gorgeous stuff for these people.

  As a last note, I want to mention the girl herself, the three year-old.  Her name was Alyna and she was such an adorable kid.  I'd gotten together with the family to shoot what I guess would be the three year-old equivalent of engagement photos, at a park up in Beaverton, a few weeks before.  She'd been shy then, kind-of afraid of me and avoiding me.  And the same was true at first this morning.  But I worked at her, kept waving and smiling and making absurd faces (after the baptism, of course -- I'd feel pretty fantastic if I interrupted such a solemn event with a monkey expression), and by the end of the evening she was clinging to my arms, saying "No va, no va!" over and over again ("Don't go!").  She was SO cute and we got so many amazing photos of her -- I'm very excited to start going over this material and get some of it online!

  Mom, dad: call us in twelve years for her quinceañera!   

--Steady State