{"id":697,"date":"2014-11-16T14:47:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T22:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tresgatos.net\/visualkaos\/?p=697"},"modified":"2014-11-18T17:50:19","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T01:50:19","slug":"pick-your-cliche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tresgatos.net\/visualkaos\/2014\/11\/16\/pick-your-cliche\/","title":{"rendered":"Pick your clich\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_2530\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Full circle. What goes around, comes around. Old habits die hard.<\/p>\n

Posts in WordPress require a headline which becomes part of the url or permalink. So it’s best practice\u00a0to write a headline\u00a0that is SEO friendly, because you write this shit for\u00a0other people to find and read.<\/p>\n

So while “pick your clich\u00e9” may not be the most searchable phrase and in fact the word clich\u00e9 has that special character, e-acute, in it which makes it even less searchy, it’s better than the head I probably would have chosen for this post which might have been something like “Full circle or how I went from small-time shooter to big-city journo … and back.”<\/p>\n

In fact, while I’m on the topic, I should actually change the name of this blog to something like, “VisualKaos, meaningless blather from a SoCal-based vizjourno seemingly preoccupied with\u00a0rambling run-on sentences that are used as rhetorical devices via the comma splice while musing\u00a0about how fast time flies by and where the fuck his entire life and career went, through\u00a0discrete blog entries displayed in reverse chronological order.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

While that would more accurately describe this and many other posts found here it’s also, less than SEO friendly.<\/p>\n

Which\u00a0has little to nothing to do with this:<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, during a content meeting at the VC Reporter<\/a>\u00a0I learned of an upcoming story about the Ventura County Ballet Company’s presentation of The Nutcracker<\/em>. That timeless pageant performed by countless ballet companies during the Christmas season.<\/p>\n

Tchaikovsky<\/a>\u00a0never could have predicted it but according to wikipedia<\/a> major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of\u00a0The Nutcracker.<\/i><\/p>\n

When I heard that VCBC would be performing The Nutcracker <\/em>I was immediately slammed\u00a0back to the mid 1980s when I was a mustachioed news photographer at the now-long-dead Oxnard Press-Courier which was located a few blocks down the street from what was then known as the Oxnard Civic Auditorium.<\/p>\n

Back then, The Nutcracker<\/em> was performed every year by Mara Lysova’s\u00a0Ballet Academi\u00e9 and I would be assigned to photograph the company, usually during rehearsals, for pre-publicitiy stories that would appear in the Press-Courier’s Lifestyle section.<\/p>\n

As part of that I got to be friendly with the auditorium manager Jack Lavin and stage manager Brad MacElmurry and would often arrange for some of the dancers to come in to the auditorium during off-afternoons and experiment with stage lighting, long exposures and multi-strobe photography.<\/p>\n

\"Brad<\/a>

Brad MacElmurry was a licensed pyrotechnical when I shot this photo around 1985.<\/p><\/div>\n

The emphasis here should be on experimentation. I could see the images I wanted in my head but in the mid-80s, I was a novice shooter and I knew not how to execute those images, technically. But I had nothing but time, carte blanche access to the stage and the paper was paying for all the film I could use.<\/p>\n

So, equipped\u00a0with a couple of Nikon F2s<\/a> and all the Tri-X pan<\/a>\u00a0I could use, I eventually learned how to make some memorable images.<\/p>\n

It was those memorable images that flashed in my head like an episode\u00a0of\u00a0The Wonder Years<\/a><\/em> during that meeting at the VCR.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the past 30 years that I spent practicing photojournalism, in ever-larger markets and then watching the news business crumble around me and now finding myself back in Ventura County working at the smallest newspaper I’ve ever been at, it seemed obvious what I should do.<\/p>\n

I wondered, what were the chances that Brad was still at the Civic Auditorium, now called the Oxnard Performing Arts Center<\/a>? Was it remotely possible that I might have that access to that stage and could I arrange to have the dancers in the glare of that spotlight again?<\/p>\n

A few phone calls later and the answer to all those questions was, yup.<\/p>\n

Last week, rather surreally, I stood in the same spot in that auditorium that I might have stood\u00a030 years ago. Time no longer seemed to moving in a straight, linear line. It was now moving\u00a0backwards<\/p>\n

This time I was carrying\u00a0a few more pounds, less (actually zero) hair, lots more gray in my beard and DSLRs with\u00a0digital sensors instead of acetate based film emulsions.<\/p>\n

Everything was different but nothing had changed.<\/p>\n

Full circle.<\/p>\n\n\t\t