aaron schwab

ever since starting my job as a grad portrait photographer two and a half weeks ago, i’ve learned many things — about my job, about photography, about people and about roots reggae.

1. in the instructional sentence, “____ your head this way,” the descriptors “tilt” and “turn” are totally interchangeable in some peoples’ minds. that’s okay; we’re Newschool Photography and we pride ourselves in our customer service, the likes of which includes a bottomless cornucopia of patience.

2. same goes for the potential interchangeability of “left” and “right.”

3. when reciting what basically amounts to the same set of instructions to a couple dozen people back to back over the course of a day, words tend to get jumbled up in your mouth, to the point that you speak not before thinking, but without thinking. embarassing slurring and verbal amnesia ensue.

4. an 18-hour playlist consisting of only Bob Marley doesn’t get old for at least a week and a half, but after that, you end up craving another variety of roots reggae. Israel Vibration and Burning Spear have been my only satisfactions to that craving.

5. it’s also totally possible to listen to nothing but the same ten Peacespeakers songs over and over again without getting tired of them.

6. after seeing four light heads pop for the 80,000th time, you become completely immune and oblivious to camera flashes.

7. after several weeks of photographing a faculty with a sizeable east Asian and east Indian population, you become surprisingly adept at pronouncing names that most unfamiliar people would skim past with a jumble of unintelligible syllables.

8. you don’t realize how valuable the strength and volume of your voice is at a job that involves talking all day until you lose it for a few days due to a cold.

9. after 30,000 photographs shot or so, a Nikon D100 starts to feel like an extension of your eyeball instead of a chunk of equipment that you hoist in front of it.

10. Macs can crash, thanks.

i’m not sure how informative, funny or entertaining this list is. i’m not even entirely sure that was my goal, even; i just felt like rambling mindlessly or so about an activity that takes up eight hours or so of my weekdays right now and is largely the cause of me being chronically underslept (in conjunction with the fact that i’m nocturnal and, as such, hate early bedtimes.)

but, it’ll all be over at the end of next week — at least temporarily, and the small period of repose before diving headlong into the science department’s grads will feel excellent.

metaphorically speaking, of course. and not that the proverbial storm is a bad thing; i just feel like i haven’t had a second within the past week that hasn’t been delegated to some sort of commitment.

it’s kind of exciting to project my life a week ahead of time and see no time that isn’t spoken for because being busy means less time to be bored; but it’s also mildly depressing in the sense that i can think a week in advance without seeing any blanks on my schedule. but such is life, and much of it is work-related. we’ve been shooting grads at UW engineering for two weeks now (for this particular block of sessions, anyways) and we’ve got another two to go, and then i’ll have at least a little break from grads — time i’ll hopefully fill at least partially with band and promo appointments and the like, as well as catching up on some long-overdue visits with friends and the like.

work thus far today has been, and will likely continue to be, quite the counterpoint to the last two weeks of shooting; Mary and i were averaging over 20 sessions per day last week, and Mary isn’t even here with me today because i have all of five people to shoot. taking on a grad session solo isn’t as grueling as i’d imagined it would be, but that’s no surprise with five people to shoot over the course of a day; if i had a schedule into double digits, i’m sure i’d feel the strain.

this past weekend was another one in Stratford with Cagney at her parents’ place, and, as always, it was a delightful one. we arrived Friday evening by way of my folks and stayed in that night so we could head to bed early enough to get up at six in the morning for the apple butter and cheese festival on Saturday morning in Wellesley (Facebook album here!)

though i myself partook in neither of the festival’s namesakes, i did have a great time checking out the vendors with Cagney and her folks and sisters. i partook in a gigantic cinnamon bun, a sausage and a few helpings of hot apple cider, the likes of which i missed dearly since last fall, or whichever fall it was that i had it last. there were mennonite folk selling handmade quilts (which can take 400-odd hours to make, or so i was told), pony and wagon rides, all the homemade food and crafts one might desire and a couple of ladies making homemade soap, which is made by cooking a stew of beef fat, lye and water in an oil barrel. according to the lady who was using an oar to stir this magnificently fragrant brew, real soap is an amalgamation of animal fat and lye; the scented stuff you buy at the grocery store is just detergent, and isn’t real soap unless lye is listed as an ingredient. after seeing how legit soap is made, i made a mental note that ignorance is indeed bliss and committed to stick to my bath gel and shower poof.

oh, and i also bought a wooden monkey mask. it has stretched earlobes. it rules. more on that later.

i feel like i’ve barely had time to sit down this week. Mary and i had sessions right up until the end of the day, but today seemed to fly by, as opposed to drag on and on like yesterday.

after two straight weeks of shooting graduates (with 50 gigs’ worth of photos taken in that time, to boot), i feel so used to shooting strangers that it’s gone from feeling like a daunting task to one i can do with my brain off — and i just know that i’ll go into autopilot mode and use my people posing lingo the next time i have a portrait or set of promos to shoot.

anyways, sorry for the short post; i’m off to Cagney’s place for the weekend for the Wellesley applebutter and cheese festival. i feel so rurally domesticated!

kind of funny that i’m slowly losing my eyesight and hearing, what with being a photographer and musician and all, aye? i need to invest in earplugs, stat; i’ve already got the glasses down pat, so i may as well focus on salvaging the latter sense.

last night’s Sellout/Fiveonenine anniversary party was off the hook heezle-dreezle. the place didn’t fill up until a little while before we went on at 8:30, but it was great. it was more of a party atmosphere than a formal show, and it was kind of cool to look around and be able to say “that’s this person from the board, and that’s that person from the board,” all while seeing corresponding nametags on some of them, including myself. when i wrote “schwabby” on my nametag and slapped it onto my shirt, i felt a definite pang of “it’s so pathetic that a website is such a large part of what the local scene is to me,” but fuck it; unity is unity!

the evening’s music was a good mix of many of the styles the area has to offer, too — The Decay’s acoustic set sounded amazing; Thundercunt and the Greasemarks had the best guitar tone, bass and band name of the night; Arise and Ruin shredded heavier than i’ve heard them do before and Farewell to Freeway did what Farewell to Freeway does best, and that’s prove why they’ve pulled off, like, 97 cross-country tours thus far. our set was probably among the best — if not the best — we’ve done to date. i was humbled and flattered and all-around stoked at some of the compliments i received regarding our short, four-song set, especially the ones about our newer songs; i’m extremely excited about the direction our newer material is going, and i can’t wait to see what some elbow grease and time commitments will do for our sound.

anyways, my neck is unusually sore right now — i keep forgetting i’m not in a metal band, and i really need to stop giving myself whiplash onstage. i was pass-out sleepy at work today, so i’m hitting the hay now to avoid such a repeat tomorrow, plus i get the joy of driving Mary to work in the morning in her own car, as she’s uncomfortable with the directions and with city driving in general. i’ll get us there in one piece, i’m sure, but i’m going to have to toy with her just a little.

or so my boss called himself yesterday as he spent portions of our workday together helping me tend to my cold. shooting thousands of grad portrait photos in a day is a daunting and exhausting task when perfectly healthy, but a touch of head cold snuck up on me two nights ago and made itself most apparent yesterday at work. Joe, ever the thoughtful friend as well as employer, picked up some ibuprofen and nasal spray for me on one of his errands and even stocked up on five different kinds of tea. “we’re gonna get you better,” or so he insisted, and he was right; after just the right cocktail of teas, pills and Dristan, i was feeling excellent. well, as excellent as one can feel with a sniffle-induced pressure headache.

it’s a little hard to believe the sheer volume of work Mary, Joe and i accomplished this past week, and even more daunting to imagine what lies between now and Christmas for us — this upcoming week, for example, is fully booked. that means 26 grad sessions per day, without a single opening (unless there’ve been cancellations between last night and right now.) each student’s session is slated to take 15 minutes, in which time 100 to 150 photos are taken. between the two of us, Mary and i shot somewhere in the neighbourhood of 17,000 six-megapixel photos this past week, totalling over 25 gigabytes of files. we have around 1000 students to shoot across the three faculties that we shoot for before Christmastime, totalling 100,000 photos shot between now and then, each one carefully posed and composed, each one entailing three or four lights popping and each one another two or three megabytes pumping through a USB cord from a D100 into one of our workhorse Macs. it’s an absolute shitload of work, but we take it exactly how we have to in order to survive it, and that’s 15 minutes and one handshake at a time.

anyways, tonight is still semi-up-in-the-air; Joe will be swinging by to pick me up in the next couple of hours and we’re going to the Victoria Park Boathouse to shoot a band we’ve been meaning to tandem-shoot for a while. then, i’ll be coming home to freshen up before an evening at the Starlight with Chris and Candice, where we’ll be meeting up with Cagney. then tomorrow morning, it’s packing up at the jamhall in preparation of the Sellout/Fiveonenine party! i’m jam-packing my weekend with so many plans, i hope my body finds the time in between to eliminate this cold completely before work again on monday, although i’m not suffering as badly as i was yesterday. stay tuned for photos of our short but sweet set after tomorrow!

i’m three days into my first week as a Newschool grad portrait photographer, and i’m loving my job, quite frankly. i’ve also learned that the company name is officially one word and not two. my bad.

what i’m really amazed by, however, is how much i’m enjoying work right now. it’s technically the same job i’ve had since last summer, but it feels so much different now, even compared to this past June’s stint in the engineering department. a scant three months ago, i was ready to rip my eyeballs out because of the amount of stress i was experiencing from work, so i was naturally dreading the September batch of engineering graduates. what really surprised me, though, is how at ease i feel at work; i’m actually having fun with my co-worker, the students we’ve been photographing, the room we’re in and the attitude on the job in general. without delving into too much detail, it should suffice to say that several environmental and interpersonal factors have been altered in our work environment, and i’m finding that the only source of stress i’m facing at work comes from the sheer volume of photographs we’re taking, but that’s to be expected — hell, that’s not even so bad, as Mary and i switch photographer/assistant duties halfway through our shifts. also, i know today was only our third day working like this, but i can’t see it doing anything but getting better as we become accustomed to each other and to the job.

our current stint at engineering wil be running until mid-October, after which point i’ll have a few weeks to myself — during this time, i’d love to book as many bands for promotional shots as possible, or shots for anyone else who might require or desire photos taken of themselves. if you or anyone you know wants work done, shoot me a line!

i’m stoked to see that one of the the underoo-clad photos i took of the lovely Jo and Heather for What’s He Building In There’s band booty shorts has made it into LOAD magazine this month, in the aptly-named Blow Your Load Buds feature. check the promo page here!

thematically speaking, it’s a little crude, i’ll admit, but it’s nice to see my work used somewhere other than my own personal portfolio and see a little credit given. getting one’s name out there never hurts!

work went smashingly today, as well — though i’ve got hundreds of grad photo sessions under my belt from the point of view of the session assistant, today was my first day actually shooting grads’ portraits (and, in a lovely twist of irony, my very first session today asked me how long i’ve been doing this — “long enough, i assure you!”) and it felt great. Joe, Mary and i work impeccably well together and i’m extremely stoked on the team we’ve got together at New School Photography. i’m anticipating the next three months will fly by as if they’re nothing, although 1000 students and 100,000 photographs taken constitute a little more than nothing!

it’s not even ten in the morning on a Saturday and i’m already awake, and have been since about seven this morning. i crashed at Cagney’s again and we were up early because she had to work this morning. i have band practice at 11 anyways, so i might as well stay up and nap later.

it’s awesome to have all our stuff moved into this new jamspace; we can be as noisy as we want, and the only real drawback — besides how the bathroom in the building looks, smells and generally is — is contending for decibels with neighbouring bands. we’ve been squeezing as much practice time in as possible this week and will continue to do so this upcoming week in preparation for the Sellout 12th anniversary/fiveonenine.com 6th anniversary show in a week:

the facebook event page is right here and the show detail on sellout.ca is here. it should will be an epic evening, full of great music, good people and nametags for board members to identify themselves for each other. there’s been talk numerous times on the forum about organizing a board-centric get-together, and it’s finally happening, and i’m stoked that PG gets to be a part of the festivities. so everybody come! we’ll be debuting a new song after being on hiatus for many, many moons.

it’s been seven years to the day since the buildings fell and 3000 innocent Americans lost their lives and a few people wrote songs about it (Thrice, Alan Jackson and Strata, to name a few) and George W. Bush invented the word “tair-sum.”

when i heard the news of two jumbo jets crashing into the World Trade Center buildings, i was but a fresh-faced grade 10 student sitting through a boring presentation in his programming class. i remember my teacher running out of the room and then coming back in, sobbing. politically speaking, i knew precious little then compared to what i know now, and i know relatively very little now, so that’s not saying much. even now, i’ve not been one of the people to jump on the “let’s fight terrorism” bandwagon, nor have i jumped on the conspiracy theory one. all i know is that unknowns still exist in the matter, and the onus to present the entire truth of the matter to the American people is on the government’s shoulders. it obviously won’t happen in such a clean-cut fashion, so whatever; everyone watch Loose Change or something.

anyways, i’m really feeling this bruise and/or bruises on my inner thigh today; i guess i missed the memo about not constantly falling off my bike when i’m on the road and landing on the crossbar, but i’ll work on that later. i should probably grab a nap before biking up to the university for six o’clock for more job training; i crashed at Cagney’s last night in a rather impromptu fashion so i’m a tad sleep deprived right now. i have band practice and beer and food at the Whale and Ale to look forward to tonight as well, so i should rest up and bathe so i don’t pass out in the midst of everything i have to do (or smell terrible while doing it, either.)

i’ll just say off the bat that last night’s Phil’s night was awesome — Cagney and i went and, for the first time in a long time, it was packed on a Saturday night, and almost everyone i’d consider one of my “Phil’s people” was there. it was just good times overall, in spite of me almost throwing my back out, but hey, that’s what i get for over-dancing to Weezer.

i woke up at Cagney’s place this morning after crashing there with her last night (funny how that particular sequence of events always seems to pan out, eh?) and we ate the breakfast that we made with ingredients we picked up at Sobey’s after Phil’s last night in bed while watching John Candy movies. though i’m all for the bagels and cream cheese Cagney usually whips together while i’m still half asleep, this morning’s fresh sliced fruit and yogurt with granola and jam on the bottom was a welcome, healthy and delicious change. plus who doesn’t love breakfast in bed, especially in the glorious presence of Uncle Buck?

after some shopping for housewares, group efforts on a Stack-A-Shelf assembly, some subs and another John Candy flick, i headed home in the rain, riding my wet bike down wetter roads, and now here i am, pooped and having to work in the morning (equipment set-up at the university for next week’s grad shooting.) it feels kind of weird and kind of neat to have spent literally over 24 hours with Cagney. i mean, it was the same sort of case the last time (and the times before that) i went to Stratford with her, but it was nice to have the place to ourselves and just kind of do whatever with her all day.

work tomorrow shouldn’t be terribly painful, aside from the meticulousness with which Joe and i will have to measure and grid off the floor in our shooting room for our lights — hairsplitting accuracy with lighting is a habit i should be very used to getting into by now, and for good cause. tomorrow night should also see our first band practice of the week and our first as a full band in quite some time, if all goes smoothly. we’re probably going to aim for practicing almost every night this week, if not every night — we’ve got a big party to prepare for in a couple of weeks, the details of which i’ll post here (and everywhere else) tomorrow when i receive them. get stoked!