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I’m just back from a three-week photo assignment shooting a rockstar that took me and my camera through Shanghai, London, New York, Miami and up and down the California coast. Life on assignment is a form of organized chaos — rushing through airports, sleepless nights, surreal days, checking in and checking out, fighting crowds, making instinctual decisions, transferring files to hard drives in the backseats of cars, forgetting to eat for upwards of twelve hours at a time, stressing out, developing rashes, meeting the oddest of characters, shouldering up to celebrity, royalty and a running into an odd amount of body guards and security. On this trip alone, I was in the presence of Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Lady Gaga, the Eagles, Jack White, A$AP Ferg, Metallica and Druids. We visited the Bund in Shanghai, a winery in Napa, the beaches of Miami, the streets of Manhattan and Stonehenge on the morning of the Summer Solstice with 15,000 people tripping out. Including Druids.
To write it out all out, it does sound incredible. Maybe it was, I wouldn’t know. As an assignment photographer, my job is not really to think, but to react and capture. I’d imagined this as my life for so long, spent so much time wishing for it, it is almost impossible for me to be on assignment without losing myself entirely to the assignment itself. I only truly experience it later…
