Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past. Sometimes to forget about my present.
My friend here goes to my shelf, pulls out one of my journals and opens to a page. I talk about it. This page is about Mexico.
I used to love to work in Mexico. There were so many great locations. Although, this one time, my photo assistant kind of got in trouble with the police. Man, if the cops caught you doing something wrong, they would milk it to the limit. Now, the usual response to an event is you can pay the fine in cash right now, or you can go down to the police station, fill out a report and later show up in court to pay the fine. Well, of course, I always went with option A. I guess you call it a 'payoff.’ It worked and also saved a lot of time. The payoffs weren’t that much. It was usually like $40 bucks or something like that.
The other thing that wasn’t so pleasant were the road conditions there. We were coming back from surfing and it was just a giant sign right in the middle of the road. My assistant hit it and ran over it. I think he spent the next part of the night knocking on doors to get a tow truck. Just another adventure. Right?
Mexico did have some great locations though. The way I shot was not really set up. If I saw a good light somewhere, I’d just go there and start shooting until someone stopped us saying we had no permission to shoot there. Mexico was cool cause no one ever stopped us. Did I mention the tequila? The tequila was awesome! I would usually convince the girl that you had to have 2 shots of tequila after every meal, and that included breakfast. My theory was that it killed all the germs in your system. I forgot to mention it also kills brain cells. Those were good shoots.
One of my favorite shoots in Mexico was in a town called San Miguel. We were shooting on the streets, I looked to my left and there was a great bar with a really old bar tender just standing there. The place was empty. I stopped the shoot. Went in and there were great black and white shots of bull fighting all around the room. I asked the gentleman behind the bar what the photos were. He said they were pictures of him during his youth. He said his dream was to retire from bull fighting and open up a bar. Well, of course, I stopped the shoot and made everyone come in and have a few drinks. A few too many, it turned out to be. I don’t think we finished that day.
I’ve got lots of other stories about Mexico, but we’ll leave it there for now. Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice
P.S. Next time we’ll talk about Maui…Woweeeee!
