Rose Colored Glasses

Old dogs and new tricks have always proved a tricky prospect, we know that. But I could never teach my dog Cooper any new tricks even when he was eight months old, so maybe I have bigger problems. I do know one thing: I've driven past a certain brick wall in Arlington at least 10,000 times in the last 20 years, but it took my bride and groom from last week's wedding to point out what I've been missing all these years.

But let's wait a bit and start at the beginning.

I first met Pam Dodge and Lawrence Luk a year ago in Paris. Well, not that Paris, unfortunately. This was the foam core one that stands next to Ballys on the Las Vegas strip, where folks can buy all sorts of Eiffel Tower memorabilia and eat all kinds of pastries and convince themselves that they don't ever really have to leave the U.S. and visit the real city. Yeah, that one. (See last week's post below.) Ugh.

Anyway, Pam and Lawrence were in Paris for WPPI, the annual wedding and portrait photographers' conference. I was there because Lexar, the folks behind those compact flash cards, asked me to speak at their booth. Lawrence is a fine young photographer himself and he and Pam were nice enough to sit through my presentation, like, three times in a row.

(Or maybe they were just waiting patiently for Denis Reggie, one of the original "rock stars" (tee hee) of wedding photography, a guy who is certainly pleasant enough but has the incredibly peculiar habit of actually referring to himself in the third person. Mick Jagger, maybe. Dennis Reggie? I don't think so.)

Anyway, one of the things I tried to convey during my WPPI presentations was the importance of freshness. When you've photographed more than 400 weddings it becomes increasingly more important to stay alert. Not Last Week's Wedding is how the mantra goes in my head. It's easy to slip into routine after all these years--part of the reason there's so much burnout among wedding photographers.

A few months after the conference Pam and Lawrence called me to tell me they were getting married. I was happy to shoot their wedding--after all, they actually made me look like I had groupies in Vegas. Seriously, I've always been looking forward to their date because they trusted me so completely, something that is, truthfully speaking, very important to me. Plus, they were starting their wedding day with a dim sum feast. Who could say no?

Digression Number One: I am a sucker for dim sum. When I worked for United Press International in Los Angeles in the early 1990's dim sum was a midday fixture. Every few days I would meet my buddies Ronal Taniwaki, of Nikon, and Bert Hanishiro, of USA Today, at Ocean Seafood, a huge restaurant in Chinatown. Ron and Bert would explain the difference between har gao and siu maii (I'm using the Wiki spellings here), and why one should never, ever pass up the pork buns. Those years of intensive dim sum consumption would not be wasted.

I moved back to the east coast and for the next ten years I worked at USA Today in Arlington, Virginia. In the lobby of the old USA Today building, as fate would have it, is the largest dim sum restaurant in the Washington area, China Garden. And when you work at a newspaper you get used to working on Sundays--somebody's gotta put out the Monday paper, right?--so it was all too perfect to stop in each week for dumplings.

So when Lawrence and Pam said they were starting their wedding day at China Garden, it just seemed like good karma.

Digression number two: Always pay attention to the karma. Years ago I was late for a meeting with prospective wedding clients when I got stopped for speeding. That damn trap on Rock Creek by the Lincoln Memorial--I should have seen it coming. And when I saw the officer writing up the ticket in my rear view window I knew I was nailed. But the officer said this instead: "I'm not sure why but I'm just going to give you a warning." And I said this: "You're a good guy, officer. I promise I'll do a good deed for someone in return." I then drove to the studio, met my couple, asked them what they did for a living and heard this: "I'm a police officer."

Okay, back to the present.

One of the cool things about doing weddings is bumping into people you know from all sorts of places. One of Pam and Lawrence's friends is Emilie Sommer, a wedding photographer from Maine who interned years ago at USA Today. And then there's Ron and Kathleen Ngiam, whose wedding I photographed some seven years ago. It was great to see them after all this time. As I was photographing Pam and Lawrence and their respective families, Ron and Kathleen passed by. I looked over and the light was amazing, an orange rim around Kathleen's hair, and I had this incredible deja vu.

Okay, enough already, you're saying. Get to the part about the brick wall. What did you notice for the first time?

Well, here's the deal. Wilson Boulevard in Arlington County has seen a lot of change since I first moved to Washington in 1988. The Sears is long gone, the Vietnamese restaurants are slowly being pushed out, and the used car lots have been replaced by Cheesecake Factories. Oh, well. So much for the "Keep Clarendon Weird" graffiti that once marked the side of an old garage.

One of the cool remnants of old Clarendon that has not yet fallen prey to development is the OK Used Car sign, a rusty throwback to another era. Pam and Lawrence asked to be photographed with that sign and I was happy to oblige. Anything but the Jefferson Memorial, I thought. So we went, we parked and I shot. Neat and funky, but nothing earth shattering. Then Pam said, "Could you shoot one of the other "OK" sign?"

"What other sign?" I said.

"The little one, behind us."

And I looked at a wall I've passed countless times in the last twenty years and said,
Oh, that one."



















Matt

Dying is easy, parking is hard

You could always count on Art Buchwald to make you double over and today's title did just that. As the CNN anchor uttered those words this morning in tribute to the great humorist I burst out laughing. And while most of today's obituaries will focus on Buchwald's vast canon of political humor, I'll always be grateful for a tiny little memoir he wrote a decade ago, I'll Always Have Paris!, a book that describes a life I've always secretly coveted.

The book looks back lovingly--and hysterically--at a time of incredible innocence and opportunity in the world, a time when all the great journalists, photographers, musicians and writers (basically, anyone who was anyone) coverged in the only logical place to, well, converge: Paris.

Of course a lot has changed since the days when Bogart and Bacall would call up a newspaper columnist to take them to lunch on Avenue George V. If you hadn't noticed, the world isn't all that innocent anymore, Paris is a tad on the expensive side, and flying just isn't the jetsetter experience it once was. But that doesn't mean we can't dream.

In a 1999 interview with Mitchell Martin in the Herald Tribune Buchwald recalled the time he took the Aga Khan to lunch: "We had a fantastic bottle of wine. The check came and nobody made a move for it, so I had to take it. It was like about $50 a person." Fifty bucks back then translates to about $900 in today's money. Even in those days, the Herald Tribune's accountants kept an eagle eye on expenses, so of course the $150 was an outrage. "Where do you get off taking the Aga Khan to lunch?" Buchwald recalled his editor, Eric Hawkins, berating him. "So I looked at him and said: He wouldn't pay."

I think we all harbor the expat dream, to be sipping our coffee (in my case, chocalat chaud) at some snooty French bistro whilst reading the International Herald Tribue. My very first trip abroad was to Paris and we've made a beeline there ever since. Our honeymoon in 1997--to Morocco and Spain--started with a few days in Paris. How could one not? Maya looked beautiful in the Loro Piano wrap and Burberry hat that I had gotten for her.(I'm not sure which is a dopier thing to lug on a honeymoon: an expensive hat or a Hasselblad.)

Last January, some nine years later, we took Alexandra, then 2 1/2, on her first trip to the City of Light. Following in her father's footsteps, she drank hot chocolate at Angelina's, discovered carousel after carousel, and jumped for joy just about everywhere we went. A year later, when we pass the hideously ugly radio antenna on Glebe Road, Alexandra always says the same thng: "Look--the Eifel Tower!"

Whatever happens down the road, she'll always have Paris.

Matt

Three's Company

It's good to be back!

And while you probably thought I was out enjoying the holidays and new year like you guys, I was actually working three weddings in rapid succession. From a Christmas wedding, to a pre-new year's wedding aboard the last surviving Potomac river barge, finally concluding with a new year's extravaganza, there was no rest for the weary. But it was all fun and each wedding, as one would hope, had its own personality.

The holidays began with the marriage of Alicia Glassburn and Matt Biliouris, just a few days before Christmas. Matt and Alicia got married at the historic Old Presybterian Metting House in Old Town Alexandria, not far from Matt Mendelsohn Photography World Headquarters.

There's something wonderful about Old Town at Christmas. Actually, there's something great about Old Town any day of the year. Since moving my studio to the corner of Madison and St. Asaph a couple of years back I've really enjoyed spending my days down there, just a few blocks from where George Washington went to church and Lafayette drank his ale. Old Town also happens to be the most canine friendly city on earth, so Cooper the wonder dog relishes his time there as well. We like to walk past the Olde Town School for Dogs (think Miss Porter's for Fido), with Cooper pulling on his leash and nuzzling every person he passes. The Olde Town School dogs look on with disdain.

Speaking of dogs, that's how I met Alicia in the first place. Every year we have a charity event at the studio, dubbed Photo Marathon, and I shoot endless portraits on an ancient camera, using ancient film. 100% of the monies raised go to a worthy cause. Several years ago, when we were raising money for the sons of Michael Kelly, a great journalist killed in Iraq, Alicia and her dog Paris came by. We've known each other since and it was a pleasure to return the favor, so to speak, and shoot her wedding.



It was a crisp night and the entire wedding party walked the several blocks from the meeting house over to the Lyceum. I don't think I've ever really appreciated how hard it is to play bagpipes and walk for blocks and blocks, particularly when you're freezing you're tush off, so Alicia's friend deserves a lot of credit. It's always fun to see people pop their heads out of their homes when a bagpipe procession goes by, and being just a couple of days before Christmas made this one even more special.

I spent Christmas here in Washington with my family. Alexandra, now 3 1/2, is at that perfect age, as far as opening presents is concerned. She hasn't mastered the art of throwing the wrapping paper over one's head, a la A Christmas Story, but she did scream out "Oh my goodness!" after every present was opened. (An unrelated new line of hers: she loves to tell the same knock-knock joke and each time she says "orange 'ya glad I didn't say banana" she squeals "I got you good, daddy!")



Right after Christmas I had the pleasure of shooting one of the smallest--and sweetest--wedding ceremonies I've seen. Nicki Gonzalez is someone I've bumped into at weddings for years and years. She's the lead singer of The Nicki Gonzalez Band and she has a gorgeous voice. A couple of months ago Nicki e-mailed me to say that she was getting married, though the venue seemed a bit odd at the time. Nicki and Jake had chosen the Gen. Jubal A. Early, the sole remaining Potomac river ferry still in service.

If you've never been on White's Ferry you should definitely check it out. The barge holds only 24 cars and makes the quick trip between Leesburg and Poolesville, MD. in a matter of minutes. What it lacks in glamour it more than makes up for in history. And as an added bonus, the U.S. Coast Guard recently tried to shut the ferry down, employing the tried and true govermental practice of swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, only to find that the ferry's owner was not about to cut and run, to use a term I truly loathe. Long live the Gen. Early!



It's not often you can count a wedding party on one two hands. (It would have been one hand but for the reporter from the local paper who tagged along. He couldn't remember anyone ever getting married on the ferry.) The ferry captain held up cars for a few minutes as we ambled to the middle of the Potomac and began our private little wedding. The river was absolutely still and everything seemed just perfect. Even the folks who had to wait for twenty minutes were offering up congratulations to Jake and Nicki.


After a beautiful ceremony, presided over by the always friendly Rev. Jim Birch, a minister I see every couple of months, Jake and Nicki hopped into their Jeep Liberty and headed off to a NYC getaway.

For me, I still had one last wedding to go before 2006 could run it's course. I met Liz Burke and Andy Bodendorf way back at the beginning of 2006 and it seemd fitting for them to be the final event of the year.


Liz and Andy chose the Willard for their big event and the hotel looked great. The holiday decorations were still up, even though everyone was now focused having a blast when midnight rolled around. After a beautiful ceremony at Faith Lutheran Church in Arlington, overflowing with candlelight, we all went back to the hotel to ring in the new year.
(I have to make special mention here of Pastor John Bradford at Faith Lutheran: After 400 weddings I think it's safe to say that members of the clergy and wedding photographers will never be drinking buddies. But Pastor Bradford was, without a doubt, the warmest, most jovial minister I've ever come across. He actually uttered the following words, rumored in wedding photography circles to be a sure sign one has died and gone to heaven: "Where would you like to be during the ceremony?" Thanks, pastor.)



Alright, enough. Time for bed. I wish all of you guys a happy new year and I promise to be a better blogger in 2007!

Matt