On this blog I am going to write about doing a shoot I did in a junkyard. The story is actually broken up in two pieces, since I actually shot twice at the junkyard. Each shoot was fun and interesting in it’s own right.

A few months ago I met up I met a rapper and a his group at a low rider show. We were walking out of the show, when these rappers approached us, at first I thought what the heck,am I going to get jacked? They asked, “Can you shoot some images of us?” I said sure, and shot some images of the rapper and his band outside of the low rider show. After the shoot, the head rapper asked me if I could shoot some images for their posters, and their album. I agreed and we set a time and a place. My wife was not too happy since if was at someones house in a part of town, she was a little apprehensive about. So the day came to do the shoot, and we drove to the west side of Phoenix. At first we could not find the house, but eventually I got a hold of the head rapper and he guided us to the house. As we drove up the Rapper and his band were out front waiting for us, drinking some Bud’s. We greeted them and walked into the house, the folks there were really nice, but my wife was still a little leery.We walked through the house and as we got to the back door there was a pit bull, oh boy! I thought someone is going to read about us in the paper and it is not going to be pretty. How nice would it be to to get killed by a pit bull shooting images? Oh well, I thought, at least I will be famous. Once in the backyard the dog was basically very, very tame, and walked up to us and panted and it even looked like it was smiling. I got my gear setup and started shooting, and after a few shots the head rapper told one of his homeys to take out the gun, which he did. The head rapper told the guy to be sure the clip was out, and even though my wife was standing behind me and I could not see her, I was sure she was going to faint. It honestly did not bother me, I did not feel threatened at all by these guys since the dog was not ferocious, you know what they say, dogs are a product of their environment, so if the dog was cool these dudes had to be as well. The guy with the gun pointed it directly at me and I got some killer shots of him. The head rapper also wanted some shots of him and the pit bull, so they got a big chain and put it around the dogs neck. The dog just stood there, how funny was that? The only way we found to get the dog to be a little ferocious was to taunt her with some food. We did get some good shots finally of the head rapper and the pit bull.So much for the killer dog.

We finished up the shoot at some empty lot, and the guys had a blast shooting. My wife and I left and headed home. I processed the images and sent the head rapper a CD with the images. About a week later I get a call from the head rapper, he tells me he wants to shoot again, and of course I agreed since these guys were really cool, and it was some good material. So again we set a time and a date, this time though I was going to get some models to join, and add to the final result.

A few weeks prior to the shoot, I ran the idea past a friend, and he actually came up with some great ideas for the shoot, and I even asked him to come along just in case, since the junkyard is in a rough part of town. The day came for the shoot, and my friend and I met at a coffee shop and headed over to the junkyard. Once at the junkyard we met a professional male model who has become quite a good friend. The three of us stood out in front of the junkyard, chatted about sports, and waited for the others to arrive. The first to arrive was a model who was with her mother and her husband, I thought this was odd since we were planning on doing some nudity in the shots, I mean, I can understand bringing an escort, but not your mom, but hey who am I to judge. The model, her mom, and her husband parked and they sat down at a little table near the entrance. Part of my friends idea was to shoot some nice shiny low riders in front of the smashed up cars, what a fantastic visual this would, be I thought, so we had the head rapper line up some of his buddies to bring their cars over. As we stood out front waiting probably one of the most beautiful trucks I have ever seen rolled up. It was bright canary yellow and yes it was a low rider.I think it was a Chevy about a 1964 or 65. These guys were the friends of the rapper, and they were there for the shoot. I had them park and they waited with all of us as well. While we were waiting, we saw several cars go by with some very pretty women in them, problem is they just kept going. I am sure it was some of the models, since they really did not look the type to hang out at a junkyard on a Saturday morning. I think they took one look at the location, and the savory crew, and just decided to keep on going.

An hour passed and still no rap group! I called the head rapper and he said that he had no ride and could I put his low rider buddy on the phone. The low rider buddy, got on the phone, and they were arguing about gas money, the low rider buddy, finally agreed to go pick up the rapper and his group. I would have done it, but did not want to leave in case any the other models showed up, plus it was like an hour away. The low rider buddy and his partner jumped in the truck but not before the partner took a leak right in front of the junkyard. My friend who is from Utah, had become quite the friend to these two guys, and after the one finished taking a leak he did the ol knuckle bump to say goodbye, but instead of doing it lightly he did it hard, and the guy said hey man that hurt. So what do you think my friend did? Mind you, I brought the guy along to avoid trouble. My friend says to the guy, hey what are you a pussy? At that moment I thought oh great we are going to get shot here in front of the junkyard, another newspaper article fo sho! Fortunately the guy was cool and the two just jumped in the shiny yellow low rider truck and left. My friend says, they wont be back, and I asked “how do you know?” He just said “I know”. He was right, and about an hour later the head rapper called and asked where his friend was, we told him they left an hour ago. At that point I decided this was going to be a wash, so I called it a day, and told the rapper we were done, I mean we had waited for three hours at this point. When I told the one model that did show, she was not too happy, but at this point I was completely finished and any creativity had left me for the day. My friend, the male model and I left and stopped to have some lunch and some beers. As we drove up to the restaurant I get a call from one of the models who was supposed to show, only four hours late. I told her we had scrubbed the mission. The male model was ready still and wanted to shoot, but again, I was done for the day. I do give him credit for wanting to shoot, but sometimes you just need to know when to call it. I think something was telling me this was not meant to be.

That ended the first portion of the junkyard saga.

As the weeks past, I thought, man I really want to shoot the junkyard stuff, so I called the male model and he agreed, and even had a new female model he was going to bring. How great was that. We setup the date and time and met once again at the junkyard, this time my wife was with me as well. Oh yeah I left my trouble maker friend home! The first time we had the shoot lined up , I had spoken with the manager of the yard, who said it was OK, so I figured that it would be OK this time, yeah right! The four of us walked up to the entrance and the security guy said no, we can’t go in, since my wife and I had flip-flops on. The male model always being prepared had some tennis shoes he lent me, and the female model had some shoes as well to loan my wife. Cool, so we were set , right? Wrong. We walked back up to the gate and the same security guy said no cameras. I could not believe it! I asked him why he did not tell me that the first time we were there, he just said no, and stood there like security guards do when they are digging in their heals. When I asked for the manager one guy went to run off to get him, but another security guard stopped him, and said the manager was no longer there, funny since the other guy went to go get him. You know sometimes you can’t fight city hall, and this was their city hall, even though my wife decided to give them a piece of her mind. This was probably a bad idea since I did not want to get in a fight with these guys. I just turn walked off, and told my wife lets go. I knew what it was , it was the fact that I am white, my wife Hispanic and the two models African American, it was so obvious this was a racial thing, it was not even funny. This time I refused to be beaten, I was determined to get some shots here, so we went to about 5 other junkyard sites there, and each and every one of them denied us entry. The male model thought it might be since they probably run illegal salvage of cars, he was probably right. I did not know how fortunate I was to get permission the first time around. We ended up shooting out in front of some of the junkyards, so the day was not a loss, although we did garner a bunch of honks and hoots. It made the young model very nervous at first ,and that was obvious when I did the post process, but after about 20 frames she settled down and the shoot was a great success.

So the moral of the story, keep on keeping on and don’t let things stop you. I learned from the first shoot I should have actually made do with what I had, but hey gotta learn from experience right?

By the way there is a great article on www.digitalgranny.com that talks about how to shoot commercial quality images, cruise on over and check it out!