Fear & loathing in palm springs
I hate New Year's Eve. Few holidays of the year incite such anxiety and paralysis in me, which is absurd considering there are multiple holidays centered around gift giving and romance, a truly diabolical pairing that is explosive when handled wrong, but I'm already getting distracted. New Year's Eve sucks because of the lofty expectations we strap to its neck. It is our collective restart, the birth of a new you and a better me! We'll right our wrongs and finally finish all those things we swore we would handle 365 days prior!
What a crock of shit!
What New Year's Eve actually is is overspending on cover fees to hit that one bar or club you've been meaning to go to but never have, making a bunch of flaccid relationships with faces you won't remember, but may get to know intimately by night’s end, and then waking up on New Year's Eve feeling like scorching dog shit on a humid NYC summer day. What an awful way to start the year! So this year I did something different. This year I worked on New Years Eve.
Now as you all know, I'm retired. I hung up my camera holster more than six years ago when I started my career in video games. But this year, the homie Brooke Olsen tagged me in to cover a NYE event for The Saguaro Hotel in Palm Springs and when the homie hits you with an offer, you have to entertain it. NYE is high stakes stuff and if your client isn't organized it can spiral into disaster...FAST. You can quickly end up on the day without a shot list, no talent wrangler, a camera shy audience, and tight turnaround time complete with high expectations for image retouching. Despite all the unfounded anxiety that was stirring in me, I was enamored by the prospect because it helped me slay the annual anxiety demon that is "what to do on NYE?" Palm Springs had eluded me for all my years in Los Angeles, and I was getting paid to stay in a cute room, complete with a complimentary food and drink tab, at one of the chicest hotels in Palm Springs. This was a golden ticket opportunity, but it also wasn't just any old NYE event...it was a Drag Queen Show!
I've done to my fair share of shows. I've lost an ear drum at a show (thank you Summer Jam 2012), chipped a tooth at a show —s/o to the long dead Alpha Beta warehouse in Greenpoint—took a bath in beer with my camera at a show (I love you Baby's All Right), been crowd surfed on at a show (where did you go Asher Roth?) but I've never experienced a drag queen show. Would I enjoy it?! Omg, what if I hate it?! What are the Queens expecting? They're super into glam...do I need to have a backdrop setup on the side with a Portrait Lighting rig? What does a drag queen dance performance even look like? Why did you say yes to this? You’re an idiot. You’re gonna blow it!" This is what the inside of my head looked like for about a week. Annoying! The anxiety that surrounds the day itself quickly mutated into fear of inadequacy, gear inadequacy.
I own many cameras, but the overwhelming majority of them are film cameras. My lone digital camera is a Sony A7R II...that's right, a SEVEN YEAR OLD mirrorless camera. Lots of things change in seven years—though Manny Ortiz recently revealed that image quality isn't one of them—and whenever I'm reminded of that the fear kicks in. I'm well aware of the limitations of my camera, I carry enough batteries to sink a small boat and spend half of my time fighting the AF system while I wait for the buffer to catch up to my trigger finger. The A7R II creates phenomenal images but it does so at a languid pace and if my Spidey senses fail I will miss the moment. Instead of focusing in on the countless events I've successfully covered with my gear—I’ve shot entire events with a manual F/.95 lens!— my brain harped on all the hypothetical ways it could go wrong. Skills sharpened over 13 years of covering events, big and small, was not enough to ease my mind. My unfamiliarity with the event style and location created just enough space for my anxious mind to cook.
The space was giving middle school prom (in the best way!) but crowd was timid and didn't behave as the Queens anticipated. The Queens wanted to perform their acts in a crowded dance floor and act like a train moving through the space. However, every time one of them would enter the room to start their performance the crowd would disperse. The crowd was expecting a stage show. In anticipation of my ancient camera's AF system not being able to keep up in low light and a timid crowd, I decided to lean into Shutter Dragging.
I hadn't used this technique to cover an event in a decade. It's risky because I’m baking in a specific look that can't be undone in post. The combo of a low shutter speed (1/15th in most of these shots), low flash power (1/4 power), and intentional zooms and whip pans mid-capture creates beautiful trails of light around your subject. You make the camera an active participant in the action and the hope is to translate that energy to the viewer by giving them a truer sense of movement. The visual energy this creates adds a boost of vitality to otherwise pedestrian images. I used the trails to engulf subjects, fill the space between subjects, and inject the memory of the night with adrenaline. I turned around 30 selects to the team by next morning and it wasn't all that hard. The Queens, the light trails, and a few lively patrons draped in sparkling gowns and heels did most of the heavy lifting for me.
The fears I dragged 100 miles to Palm Springs never materialized, the nervous musings of an anxious mind rarely do, but like dreams anxious thoughts feel real when you’re inside them. The key is to avoid getting stuck in the cycle. If you’ve been following me on Instagram (and you should be!) you’ve likely seen me suffering through cold exposure therapy. I’m trying to train my mind to defeat monsters of its own design. Meditation, daily exercise, and cold therapy are my combat instruments in this war for control. Control of my body, my mind, my spirit, and my future.
Are you in control of you?