Horrifying learning experience

So I guess my documentary ran on Spectrum this weekend. Stefanie messaged me on Instagram and said people were saying they saw her and Danny D on TV.

This is like, one of my biggest accomplishments thus far and I should be happy - which I am - but I’m traumatized by what happened to the documentary right before it aired…

This is the most rookie mistake, and I want to crawl in a hole and die, but I think I should talk about it because it is a horrifying learning experience that I definitely do not want to repeat.

Apparently I had some kind of stroke and didn’t realize I was using copyrighted music for some of the segments. And to add to the already embarrassing blunder, I didn’t even catch it. The Impact editors (the team at USC who’s prepping our docs for TV) realized it was copyrighted and they had to scramble to change out the music. They contacted me to let me know and when I asked if I could help they were basically like, “no thanks, you’ve done enough.”

I was so shocked and embarrassed that I haven’t watched the TV version. I saw it’s on Impact’s Facebook and I’m not sure how to get a copy of Spectrum’s block of programming for last weekend weekend, but man, this was an intense hit and totally my fault.

It looks really bad, and it is really bad. I’m thankful that the editors did their jobs and it didn’t run with copyrighted music, but it sucks to make this kind of mistake.

Let’s move on and up.

Shot some stuff

Did a shoot for Los Angeleno - an LA-based site that will debut this month - and thought I should post some of it.

Strippers are unionizing; on Feb. 22, a wild cat strike broke out at the Crazy Girls club in Hollywood. Antonia Crane was an organizer. She’s a stripper, author, and teaches a course in the UCLA Extension program. It was an interesting night.

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I have other assignments on the horizon but not as many as I’d like to be doing. And, as always, applying for jobs.

It feels good to be productive.

Picking up momentum

The last couple of months have been interesting. I think interesting is an extremely overused word, but in this case, I think that’s how I would describe them… or at least, the opposite of boring.

It’s been a while since I seriously looked at my website - I think I write that every time I update it - but I’m picky about my work and not everything is worth showing to everyone.

But I have been doing a lot of running around lately.

The second semester started this week at the University of La Verne. I’m teaching Staff Photography, which is also being the adviser for the photography staff for ULV’s student weekly newspaper and biannual magazine and be in charge of their processing/production. So that’s fun.

I’ve also been freelancing different kinds of photo-related jobs - like documenting a local arts school’s vocal music program or fulfilling the Los Angeles-based photography needs for international publications in Australia and Finland.

This morning I shot one of three stories for “Kauppalehti Optio” (a Finnish business magazine) on USC’s campus. It was nice to stop by Annenberg and say hi to former professors.

I checked in with Spectrum and they don’t have anything for me to shoot right now so that’s a bummer. I’ve never been an on-retainer freelancer so I’m figuring it out as I go.

I’m doing so many jobs here and there; life is a little random so I’m trying to embrace it and try new things.

Like last week, the shoot for “Kauppalehti Optio” was in Santa Monica, and the guy hadn’t been east of downtown and the brief conversation with the writer was basically, “Oh you should go to Silver Lake! It’s lovely.”

Um, this isn’t going to turn into a rant about the real East LA, but come on, people. It made me think about my lowrider friends and the erasure of their friends/families’ struggles, the gentrification of their neighborhoods…

So basically what I’m saying is that I’m going to continue to get to know people out of my usual friend circle and start exploring a little more and learning a little more because I don’t know when I’ll have the opportunity to explore the nooks and crannies of this diverse city.