On Assignment: St. Barths I

A bit of personal news to begin with... I turned another year older today. I'm now firmly in the "30 is just around the corner" camp -- not that I'm complaining. But a birthday can be a strange thing to spend whilst on assignment, especially in a place that isn't super easy to reach by any particular loved ones or friends who want to send you some cheer. I'm not complaining about that either, mind you, because I'm writing this from my beautiful hotel suite listening to the ocean crash over the beach in St. Barths... life could get worse than this.

I got a call on Monday from Redux asking me about a job down in the Caribbean. Sounds perfect, right? But after hearing that it was going to be a grocery list-type travel job, where I'd be given a big list and have to run around madly trying to check things off (I'm not a big fan of that both because it can be very stressful and also nearly impossible to finish since there is always more you can check out. And since the editor feels like they've basically sent you on vacation, they expect the world) and once I found out that it was scheduled for the 4 days surrounding my birthday, I politely asked Redux to turn it down for me. Laura, the rep who called replied "uh, really?" And then after I assured her, "really," she quickly replied, "OK, oh, wait, Jasmine wants to talk with you about this." I get transferred to Jasmine who starts in immediately, "are you crazy?! You want to turn down a job in St. Barths for a great magazine?!" You gotta love when your agency calls you crazy.

It is a little crazy I guess, but jobs aren't everything. It takes a long time to get to a place, and I'm very fortunate to even have the luxury of turning things down in a way, where that's an OK option. To explain, what I was thinking was that I've been out of town at least a couple of days every single week in the last 2 months, and it was clear my girlfriend was looking forward to having me around a bit. Also, I wasn't sure what plans she had for my birthday and even though its exciting for her that our life together throws a lot of curve balls, I didn't think this one would be met with anything close to enthusiasm. So I said no.

15 minutes passed before I picked up the phone to call back Redux and tell them I'd come to my senses. Yes, I would love to spend my birthday in St. Barths... but that I wanted an assistant. It was an awful 15 more minutes before I heard back that the job was still mine and I should pack my bags. In the mean time I had called my girlfriend and was half-sure that if I could get the assistant budget OK'd, that I could bring her with me and make it a great time for both of us. She has assisted for me several times, and has always been a big help. Using your girlfriend/significant other as an assistant certainly could have some big detractors, but its also a very cool thing... especially when the job can bring you somewhere fun and relaxing. I've long been jealous of my friends Eric and Jen who manage to trek all over the place together for clients and therefore spend way more time together than I get to do with my girlfriend, who doesn't have much time during medical school anyway.

By the end of the day the word had come back that there would be no way to bring an assistant (ticket prices were abnormally high because there were very few seats remaining), but the girlfriend was happy I was going and gave her blessing. On Tuesday I talked with my editor at The New York Times Style magazine about the shoot and grocery list (which ended up being smaller than I had feared). That night I got to have a pre-birthday dinner with the girlfriend and a small group of my family which made up for the fact that I wouldn't be around for the actual day. Everything was working out, except for the "getting there" part. Many small islands in the Caribbean have restrictions against direct flights from any major city, so you have to fly into a much small nearby island that has been designated to be the hub in the region, and then find another way to go the rest of the way. Getting to St. Maarten from Miami was a piece of cake -- there is even a daily direct flight. Getting from St. Maarten to St. Barths is normally no big deal either... except when the ferries aren't operating.

My first phone call to my hotel confirmed that ferries were out of the question. Shit, OK -- well what else can I do? A prop plane or hire a private boat/jet to take me. At this point I've already plunked down way more for the airfare to get me to St. Maarten than my client was happy with. There are 3 small carriers that use prop planes to bring people to St. Barths from St. Maarten. A flurry of phone calls confirmed that 2 of them were completely book all week. The third and largest carrier, WinAir, was not picking up their phones... literally, I called and called and called, and no one wanted to talk with me. Gotta love the islands. So just to be prepared to answer my editor's first question once I told him that the flights were all full, I called back the hotel to ask about how much a private boat would be from St. Maarten (a 30-45 minute trip by sea) -- the answer was almost hilarious: 1000 Euros. Right, well, hmm. I called my editor and told him the skinny... shit. We had basically gotten me to within 10 miles of my destination, spent over $2000 in expenses, and it was looking like I wouldn't even be able to get there. He decided to call his travel agent and see what we should do.

30 more minutes and there was good news... the travel agent was able to find me what was basically the last seat that day on any airline to St. Barths! But in order for me to actually get the seat I would need to have the printed tickets overnighted to me in Miami (going to the Caribbean without hard proof of your ticket reservation is not a good idea) and though I agreed I immediately had a similarly bad feeling about the likelihood of FedEx's first morning delivery getting to me before I had to leave for the airport.

Dinner was wonderful, the tickets arrived on earlier than they were even due Wednesday morning, and I was off to the airport with no problems. Getting to St. Maarten was a breeze, and since I didn't have to check any bags it was easy to get through immigration and customs. However, I just happened to be coming through St. Maarten on the very first day that they had opened their new airport, which was long since been under construction, and it was really not done yet. Signs led to no where, or the wrong way. People stood everywhere looking about them and scratching their heads. I was looking for my WinAir ticket counter, but there wasn't a WinAir ticket counter. I finally found 2 counters that didn't have a sign at all and asked the woman if this is WinAir. "Of course." Yeah, of course. I waited in line while the guy in front of me who just had an electronic confirmation was sent away back to the office because he needed a "real" (paper) ticket (whew). When it was my turn up to the counters the computers froze. Finally they used another computer and gave me a boarding pass. This was going fine.

My gate was C-2, but there wasn't a C-2. There was a C, but there were no employees. More nervous waiting and head scratching all around me. Finally a woman came over and was almost literally attacked by a mob of people ready to start their vacations. She assured us that the flight was going to take off a bit late, at around 4 p.m., and we could just sit down and would be called. 20 minutes 'til 4 I happened to be passing the "gate" and heard the same woman ask about passengers to St. Barths. I went closer (I had been heading to the bathroom) and she said, "Who is going to St. Barths on WinAir?" 15 people who obviously knew enough not to listen to the "just go sit down" speech had their boarding passes raised in the air. I put mine up in the air and waded into the crowd just as she counted up to 18, which was the max for the prop plane. The flight numbers, times, seats, etc. -- it meant nothing, and I was just happy to be heading in the right direction at the right time.

On the plane the captain/flight attendant steered out to the end of the runway, then turned around 180 degrees and announced for us to fasten our seat belts... "the flight will take about 9-10 minutes and we won't get any higher than 1500 feet." He wasn't lying. 10 minutes later we took a hard dive into St. Barths, barely clearing one of the volcanic peaks, and took a hard short landing perfectly into the airport. The pilot pulled up to the building, shut the plane off, opened his door, and exclaimed, "welcome to St. Barths!" From there I was met by DJ from my hotel and was ushered straight to their grounds, up and down insanely steep, narrow roads. We got to the Hotel St-Barth Isle De France and the general manager greeted me and led me straight to my room, an incredible suite with a beautiful view of the ocean -- which is where I'm sitting right now waiting for the rain to pass.

After a nice evening, great dinner, great sleep, wonderful breakfast, some shooting around the hotel, and a swim -- things are going pretty well. Upon getting into my room and doing some unpacking I discovered the one thing that I left behind. It's always one thing, and its never a HUGE problem, but still annoying. I had meant to bring my battery charger with me, but forgot. I wouldn't even mention this at all, but when I grabbed my camera last night and took off around the hotel for the sunset I immediately was greeted with an empty battery on one of my two batteries for my digital camera. Thing is that I intentionally recharged both of them before the trip, which is why I wasn't adamant about bringing my charger. I should have anyway, but I was about to freak out while I went back to my room to check to see how much charge my other battery had left. Thank god its completely full. I've had this problem with batteries not charging when I put them into the charger, but instead doing a total "dump" (completely draining to be refilled so they don't have a "memory" problem). But, there is a button you have to push to "dump" a battery, and I didn't. Just another problem I've had lately with a Canon accessory; my 580 speed light & transmitter have also been going crazy lately too.

So other than the nightmare that I would run out of batteries while on an isolated island on assignment, there are a couple of other things I'm trying to overcome to make this job successful. First, there is the fact that I don't speak hardly any French. St. Barths is a French outpost, but there is a lot of English spoken too as you would imagine in a economy based on tourism. Next, I don't have a car on the island because I don't really need one, but getting around may be difficult. Also, its incredibly humid this time of year -- so much so that I really have no choice but to keep my gear on the porch at all times except at night, so that when I leave to go shoot I don't have to wait a long time for the cameras to get unfogged. Lastly, which is the reason I am taking a break to write this post at all, it rains a lot here, so I'm going to have to try and make it not look blue and overcast in every picture. Wish me luck... and happy birthday.

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