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We just got back from seeing “Up in the Air” with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. We’d planned on seeing it before Christmas and then yesterday while returning or exchanging items at the Westchester Mall I saw Vera Farmiga buying a coffee at Starbucks and later having lunch with her friends around a table. I don’t consider my current profession to be that of a “Paparazzi” but have once or twice visited film sets to get some street shots. I hated doing it, even though I made some money and kept an agency happy with the pictures. Here is my dilemma: most days I love my job and am really happy to be a working professional photographer covering events throughout NY for agencies like Getty Images, however when I see celebrities out on the street (or shopping malls) I feel the need to grab pictures of them, stalk them and ask them to pose for me. Exclusive pictures of Vera Farmiga shopping with her kid the day after her movie has been released would have been worth plenty of money, but I would have felt like a scumbag taking them. So all I got was this fuzzy iphone picture of the scene outside Sephora and I left the mall sulking about not being a perv with a big lens!

So here’s the problem… I love taking pictures and making money is pretty awesome too and recently I’ve been able to do both which is really great. It’s just that there are a few side affects:

1) I don’t ever take pictures for fun or of my life outside of work.

2) I don’t ever use either of my beautiful film cameras (Voigtlander R3A and Mamiya 7ii).

3) I can’t even go to a shopping mall on Boxing Day without thinking about work.

P.S. – The movie was pretty good. Not amazing but worth watching on DVD or maybe even HBO. The previews always show all the best parts. Bah!