On Assignment: Mooresville, NC

Though I lose track of this from time to time, assignments themselves are living, breathing things, prone to unexpected outcomes and radical shifts of focus, all normally way beyond the photographer's control. This notion has been recently re-drilled back into my head with a couple of magazine jobs that winded up ending pretty far from where they started. One of most interesting shoots was for ESPN the Magazine. While scrambling through rush hour Houston traffic in my rental car I got a call from an editor at the magazine, and was immediately jazzed about the profile she wanted me to work on. Her story pitch pretty much had everything: thrills, chills, deep sea fishing, a helicopter, and great access. (I've never really been one of these guys who becomes a photographer in order to do cool shit, but of course, I'd also be flat out lying if I said that doing cool shit is not a really fun part of my job. It definitely is).

A few days later I woke up long before the sun and cruised up I-95 to meet up with NASCAR driver Greg Biffle for a story focused on his off season and the changes going on with his team at Roush Racing. The plan was to head out with him and a couple of lucky contest winners to go deep sea fishing in the Atlantic. Even though its really early, I was driving and smiling like an idiot at the thought that I was going to get to go fishing on assignment. I love to fish (I'd like to think, as a Florida native, that it's in my blood), and I never make any time to go fishing myself. The little that I knew about Greg before I took the assignment was that he also loved to fish, and so it looked like it would be a great day for both of us. But then... cue some dramatic music... about 45 minutes into my drive I instinctively reached for my cell to check my e-mail - absurd since it was 6 a.m. - and found that had a message from my dad. Straight to the point, which my dad always is, he asked, "did Biffle cancel the fishing trip? He had a very bad wreck in Las Vegas and is hurt." WTF?! Seconds later I called my dad and got some more info: my subject got in a serious wreck while doing a tire test and dislocated his shoulder. There was no way that he would be able to go fishing or even hold a pole.

Within a couple of minutes I made calls to his PR people, my editor, the writer, and got no answers anywhere. I figured I'd take a long drive early in the morning, get there and learn the bad news, and then head home. I wasn't that bothered because it was a nice morning and my favorite Sirius jazz channel had just played 3 Mingus tunes in a row. When I pulled into the marina and Greg and his entourage were nowhere to be found, I camped out waiting and eventually the PR guy called me back to confirm that Biffle was going to go fishing even though he was hurt; they were just running late. By the time that they arrived and chatted with the contest winners and the gathered media, it was clear that even though Greg had agreed to go out on the boat, there was no way he could fish. Also, the weather out in the Atlantic had turned from poor to very terrible, and it was unlikely that we'd even go out to deep water. Our dramatic deep see excursion turned into a leisurely boat tour up and down the intercoastal waterway, with Greg, his arm in a sling and looking very tired, mostly taking it easy and trading tips with his boat sponsors.

A couple of hours later I felt pretty sure about two things: first, that I had exhausted every possible way of photographing Greg on a rainy morning of not going fishing, and two, there was a pretty good chance that Greg's injury was going to cause the rest of my story (and several days to be spent with him up in North Carolina) to be either cancelled or put on hold. Growing very bored as we passed a ridiculously gaudy mansion festooned with 8 ft. inflatable Christmas decorations for the 3rd time, I thought how much I liked that assignments couldn't be kept in little boxes, like the pictures they produced.

The day after the boat trip I was surprised to hear that ESPN still wanted the writer and I to go to Mooresville, NC. Biffle, for his part and despite his shoulder, kept every event on his schedule as well. By the time that I saw him again at his lake house he had filmed 2 commercials and made another public appearance for one of his sponsors (NASCAR drivers, as you can tell from the cars, have dozens of sponsors each, and even more that aren't involved with the racing team itself). We drove to his house in Mooresville and met his girlfriend and their 4 dogs. Together they run a foundation that finds homes for neglected pets, and their love for their dogs was pretty cool to see. Outside, and again despite his delicate shoulder, Greg picked up one of their boxers in his arms like a HUGE baby (the dog is probably 90 lbs.), and rough-housed around. In addition to being a dog person myself, I really love when there are dogs around on assignment when I'm doing a profile piece. With someone like Greg who has media around him a lot, and who is also a very private person in many ways, having his dogs there to play with went a long way towards opening his personality up and making for more dynamic pictures. Later my editor reported back to me that her and all of the editors basically fell in love with these dogs.

The shoot at home with Greg seemed to start off the North Carolina piece of the story in a great way. At first we hadn't been invited to their home at all, but were supposed to meet Greg and the dogs at his personal automotive shop. But that morning they decided it was better for us to go there instead, and I was excited that he might have trusted us to get a little closer to him and his world. However, that turned out to be short lived.

Our next stop was at Roush Racing and their main automotive shop where Greg was having lunch with his new and old teams and talking about the wreck. The car that he wrecked in Las Vegas with was in the shop, and it was insane to see and think of someone enduring that sort of impact at 200 mph. (The left side of the car was almost gone from the car slamming into the wall for 2 turns, knocking Biffle unconscious, and catching on fire). I was able to photograph the car, even though I was later sternly lectured at by one of the PR people. It was stupid on their part... they knew I was coming there, it was out in plain site, and there was no way in hell that I wasn't going to photograph it. Even if they had asked me not to photograph it before I got there, I would have stilled tried to get something as subtly as possible because that is my duty on behalf of ESPN, who they've allowed access to.

At Roush, unfortunately, Greg became more distant and disinterested. His injury and insanely full days seemed to be running him down, and I knew that the rest of his week was going to get even worse. He stayed around with the crew for another 30 minutes and then split, which was a lot less than we had hoped for and included nothing of him working with his team on any of the new cars. We also learned that later that night there was a charity Toys for Tots event that we had not been told about that Greg was participating in. However, when we mentioned that we were going to try and check it out, his PR people, who weren't actually in charge of the charity event in anyway, told us that we would not be allowed to and that Greg would rather it be low-key. Obviously he was just tired, and I don't fault him for that, but he had also committed to us being there.

In those sorts of cases it can be very difficult to strike a balance between the needs of your clients and limits of your subject. Because we still had another day to spend with Greg, I decided that we should just forget the charity event that night. If it had been our last day, and especially because we had not been able to get as much as we had hoped for, then I would have gone regardless. A few days later I was on assignment in Atlanta for People Magazine and had a similar situation concerning wardrobe. The editor really wanted the subject in a certain style of pants, but after multiple locations and changes, my subject just really wanted to be more comfortable, and I stepped in because there was no reason for her not to be, despite my editor and the stylist. I feel that when I have the ability to make the subject feel more relaxed and open to being themselves, then I'll almost always do what I can, be damned some sort of plastic objective of documenting them in some particular way.

On assignment you are always leveraging the short term and long term implications of any number of decisions. Do you fight for more access now and possibly ruin your good will for later? All I think you can do is go with your gut and try to give yourself the best opportunity to do good work. My inclination and preference is to always go with the flow, because that's how I view my job as a documentary photographer, but I'm also perfectly willing to stand up for myself and my client, resorting to being a giant fucking prick if need be, if it means saving the assignment from falling apart.

Having the rest of the afternoon and night off was great for me in Charlotte, and I was able to get a ton of work finished and transmitted from several shoots for other clients that had all been back-to-back-to-back. Doing a bunch of work was against my instructions from my editor, however. She urged me to "go crazy and party in Charlotte!" or something like that. Sorry Tricia, next time!

After a good night's sleep, the next morning the writer and I went back hoping that Greg would be feeling refreshed and aware that we had given him some room, but that was over. Greg was in complete auto-pilot during a early morning photo shoot for 3M (another sponsor) also held in the Roush Racing complex. For me it was surreal photographing the shoot, all product shots of Greg holding roll after roll of tape or other 3M stuff, from behind the scenes. The photographer and his assistants were nice, but they reacted pretty strongly to my being there and photographing the in between boredom and zombie-ism that Greg and every other sports star or celebrity experiences at these type of shoots. He stood there next to an infinite white wall set-up, surrounded by booms, soft boxes, scrims, with a stylist running out to fix his fire suit and thrust the next of an endless line of products in his hands. Crazy. This and the dogs ended up being my favorite parts of shooting, representing either side of the intimacy spectrum.

Just like in a race, Greg was speeding his way through the photo shoot. They had 4 hours, and by hour 2, when they switched sets to a giant area where one of his cars had been towed onto the set, he was nearing the end. 45 seconds after the last shot he had shaken everyone's hands, said thanks and happy holidays, and was out the door. The photo shoot, and my profile was over. Instead of showing all of the different ways that Greg spends his off season time on his hobbies (fishing, flying his helicopters, his dogs), it instead really illustrated the insanity of Biffle's life and lack of free time. Two hours after the end of the 3M shoot, he boarded a private jet and flew back down to Florida for another public appearance. I guess that's just another reason why I'm glad I'm not a NASCAR driver.

I spent the rest of my time in Charlotte editing the Biffle shoot and doing Christmas shopping. A week later I was glad to hear from ESPN that they loved the photography and were giving the story more room in the magazine. I think it comes out next week, so take a look and I'll publish the layout and some of my favorite images they didn't use here once I get a copy.

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Comments (1)

Cool website! ;) Best regards and nice day!

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