The Calm Before the Garth

It's twenty minutes past six on a gorgeous July evening in Bossier City. Somewhere in this building, beyond the four walls of the conference room where I sit and wait, is a man and his wife who are about to unleash their artistic gifts on a crowd of thousands at the CenturyLink Center.

But I hear the sound of the air conditioner (thankfully--I live in Louisiana and Hell is cooler in July). I hear a few venue staffers walking to and fro, chatting to each other and laughing. I hear the sound of my own typing.

It is eerily quiet.

This is my usual routine as house photographer for the two SMG venue properties in my region. I show up early. I field specific instruction. And I wait. It is a pensive and reflective time for me.

I am quite literally living one of my lifelong dreams, to photograph rock stars, just like Linda McCartney and Annie Leibovitz. I am able to do this because good people in the right positions know me and trust me to do my job and play by the rules, and to deliver quality photos on time that make them look good. It's what I do.

But y'all....

This is extraordinary and commonplace all at the same time. So much so that it amuses me. I prefer to arrive early and bring work with me. I take my place in the quiet of the conference room and set up my desk. I usually bring a drink and a snack because what takes me 9 minutes to photograph takes sometimes 3 hours to wait out. I chit chat with my friends on staff, catch up on the latest, and basically chill.

Then, all of a sudden, I get the word from my handlers that it's time to roll. This moment always has a highly urgent, charged, and intense feel to it. I grab the camera I have already prepped and readied for the assignment and follow closely behind my handlers. I must be escorted throughout the facility and there are strict rules that are different with every entertainer's rider about where, what, and how long I can shoot.

Once we enter the arena, I usually take long glances across the sea of faces to see if I recognize friends among the crowd. Almost every time, I see a hand fiercely waving and my face breaks into a warm smile to greet the friendly face staring back at me. This is a happy place where people are excited about what they are about to see. And regardless of the artist, I'm excited, too, because I know what a privilege it is to be there and have the opportunity to capture these moments. I am grateful for each of them.

As we take position for shooting, there is yet another wait for the lights to dim and the show to begin. The quiet of the conference room is replaced with the low roar of an expectant crowd that crescendos into a raging thunderous applause of claps and screams as the artist takes the stage. I'm in a fever to capture as many quality shots as I can, often from the center of the arena with a telephoto zoom lens that I am praying will give me shots that feel so much closer than I actually am. It is a frenzy of shutter clicks and light checks to make sure my settings are on target and my images are sharp. In most cases, I have three full songs to capture--that's like nine minutes.

For Garth, I have one song, barely 3 minutes. It is maddening.

Too soon, I feel the leg tap I am expecting from up on my step stool and quickly disengage, gather myself, and follow behind the escorts back to the conference room.

It's all over. I've grabbed 206 shots. Here are a couple:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

"Love after Love" from COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott.

Weekend Highlights

Good Monday morning, Bloggers!

Today, my thoughts are with my friend Jill who lost her fur baby over the weekend. I remember April 26th, 2010, like it was yesterday, the day I lost my Miss Rosie. I still miss her but am thankful to encounter her frequently, alive, well, and purring happily, in my dreams. Here's the post I wrote about Rosie's passing back then. I hope it brings peace and comfort to all of those who've lost furry loved ones along their way.

Yesterday was a full and fun day for We Corbetts.

We started out at Grace Community #surprisedbyGrace, like we do most Sundays since Christmas 2015. This morning we heard the compelling story of the McCormicks in Africa who are about to embark on a life-transforming mission to Mozambique where David will serve as a hospital administrator and Elizabeth will serve as the pharmacist for a rural 200-bed hospital that serves a large coastal

region of the Southeastern African nation. I feel so grateful to be close to a family that will be living and working in Africa, and Charlie and I talked about how beautiful it will be to support this family and know that women and children, in particular, are getting the medical attention and care they need, at least in this part of the world. I'll be checking in on David and Elizabeth along their at-least three-year journey. Excited to walk alongside!

After some kick-ass church (yeh, i said it), we headed over to Bon Temps Coffee Bar for a second Town Hall discussion about race, policing, and community in our town. Hosted by owner Marcus Mitchell, the Town Hall has become an ongoing series of conversations in our community in a safe place where opinions, fears, joys, and sorrows may be freely shared in the pursuit of mutual understanding and shared peace. I'm so proud to be a voice in the conversation but so privileged to be a hearer of the many other voices rising to the microphone to be heard. Mitchell is also a local law enforcement officer (LEO) and African-American and brings a unique perspective to the discussion of race and policing to

our conversations. Juan Huertas, pastor of Grace Community, has also been attending with me and sharing a new, more progressive Christian perspective that we believe has pleasantly surprised some among our group. We look forward to future conversations toward the goal of bringing peace and understanding to our diverse community and to tackling other issues among the marginalized and disenfranchised communities of homosexuals and women, who also need to have their voices heard in the public sphere. Though at times frightening, I also believe it is an extraordinary time to be alive. Grateful for a place like Bon Temps to get down to the nitty gritty together in harmony.

Finally, I'd like to remind all my locals that The Cotton Boll Grill is OPEN for Business at 1624 Fairfield Ave. I stopped by this morning, desperate for coffee, and was greeted warmly by Gregory and presented with a delicious fix of the elixir of life. Open Monday through Friday, 6a to 3p, the Cotton Boll offers daily lunch specials.

Monday is Baked Chicken or Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. Tuesday is Meatloaf or Southern Fried Smothered Pork Chop. Wednesday, New Orleans Style Fried Chicken or Chef's Choice.
Thursday is a Cane River Pork Chop or Chicken and Dumplings. And Friday is brimming with Southern Fried Catfish, Shrimp Gumbo, Jumbo Fried Gulf Shrimp, or a Seafood Combo.

Guess what I'm having for lunch today?

Troubled Waters and Having a Plan

The office flooded on Tuesday. Got the call at 8:45am. A fire on the third floor above us. Sprinklers and SFD water hoses. And water gushing through the ceiling tiles and onto everything we've worked hard to accumulate and maintain to run our businesses. Devastating. And now happening for the third time.

Most all is well. No one was hurt or killed. Things can be replaced, repaired. We have insurance. Life and work, thankfully, will go on. I am grateful, but this recent episode got me and a friend of mine thinking: what are pictures worth in a moment like this?

Friends, they are priceless.

Every one grabs shots when the shit hits the fan. Hell, even the ServePro people were taking photos with their phones during their short-lived clean-up (too expensive for Corporate, so they pulled them off the job). We were all frantically grabbing shots of the ruins of our equipment, the soggy ceiling tiles disintegrating all over our precious professional belongings. I found my beloved camera, the money-maker of my business, standing in a pool of water on top of my particle-board-constructed desk. It is no longer serviceable. These are definitely times to capture the damage visually.

But now I will show you a more excellent way.

Document. Document what is valuable to you. Whatever that is. Have a digital copy and a print copy in a safe, water- and fire-proof place. If it makes you money, take photos of it. The insurance company will need to see the item as it was as well as damaged. Better yet, have a professional do it for you! The higher the quality of those photos, the harder it will be for the claim to be denied. Don't trust your livelihood to fuzzy, blurry, too-dark or too-washed-out photos.