Sunday, August 26, 2007

Tagged :: 8 things you might not know about Matt

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, my friend Rachel LaCour in Atlanta "tagged" me with this internet chain. In the past, I've been accused of being exceedingly grumpy about these kind of reindeer games, but I've turned over a new leaf. As of this moment, I promise to be only marginally grumpy about these things. I will happily divulge eight things you probably don't know about me, though some have been cryptically listed on this very blog for a year now. But for the record, anyone who sends me an internet chain letter, an urban myth that has not been Snopes-tested, or a request to deposit money into a bank account in Congo on behalf of "my relatives, the Mendelsohns of Congo, who died tragically in a car accident outside the petroleum factory they owned" will be ignored as usual.

So here goes, 8 things you didn't know about me:

1) I have never, ever, ever had a cup of coffee in my life. Don't ask. I hated the taste when I was a kid and it never changed. In fact, I can remember my Nanny Kaye, in her little apartment in Miami Beach, circa 1970, giving me a cup of coffee ice cream and me desperately trying to get my brother Eric to eat it. Eric would end up with this duty more often than he probably bargained for-- the time in Shelburne Falls, Mass., when I dumped an entire plate of moussaka into his napkin at a dinner party comes to mind. (And that was long before I would end up marrying a Greek woman.)

2) I am not the world's greatest flyer (an ample understatement), but in in my life have done the following:

a) Twice jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. One was a static line jump from 3,000 feet in college. The whole floor of my dorm did it. I wasn't really thinking; The second time was a tandem free-fall from 10,000 feet above the Mojave Desert. A colleague from work asked me if I wanted to go. I wasn't really thinking.

b) Lay flat on my stomach in the refueling pod of a KC135 tanker looking straight down 27,000 feet. See the "21 in 21" section of the new website for more details.

c) Done loop-d-loops in an open-cockpit biplane piloted by bestselling military thriller author Stephen Coonts (Flight of the Intruder). I was shooting him for USA Today and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I remember having this headset on, through which all I could hear was the sound of static mixed in with a lot of wind. At one point I heard the following:

"Kercrrr kerrrrc chrrrr chrrr-upside-krchr chhrrrr kkrrrttssks?"

I didn't have a chance to decipher any of it before we were completely inverted. Good time, actually.

3) Having grown up on Long Island, and having been properly groomed by my grandfather, I still have a soft spot for egg creams (curiously, there's no egg involved), Mallomars (greatest Nabisco product of all time) and black and white cookies. (Remember, it's a cake cookie; if it's hard as a rock it can't be called a black and white cookie.) I know never to get a shake when one can have a malt instead. And after every wedding, even at 2:00 a.m., I drink a YooHoo, stemming from some perverse good luck ritual.

4) The most embarrassing detail of my childhood--one that still gives me goose bumps--is that in Miss Grywin's 5th grade class at Central Park Road School in Plainview, New York, when all the kids dressed up for the day as their favorite great American (Honest Abe, astronauts, Mickey Mantle), I chose Walt Disney. So there I was with a suit and tie and a fake mustache that looked more der Führer than Uncle Walt. Here come the goose bumps.

5) My favorite movies are:

•Local Hero
•The Red/White/Blue trilogy of Krzysztof Kieslowski
•Breaking Away
•Love and Death
•The Great Escape
•Waiting for Guffman and/or Best in Show.

6) I went to see Star Wars with David Fischer at the Hicksville movie theater the week it came out in 1977. I thought it was okay, I guess, but I've never had a desire to see any of the 97 sequels and prequels since. In fact, each time I catch even a snippet of Natalie Portman walking with Hayden Christensen, both uttering some of the most awful movie dialog of all time, I'm convinced that George Lucas is actually a non-human life form.

7) Every year when July rolls around I turn into a Tour de France junkie, watching each day's telecast at least three times. First comes the live broadcast, followed by the re-broadcast, followed by the evening wrap-up show and re-broadcast. This year, with so many terrible doping scandals, I was convinced that I wouldn't care as much. I didn't miss a day.

8) My uncle Allan gave me my first camera, an Olympus OM-1. I was 13 or so at the time and the fuse was lit. The photograph that put me on the path to where I am now is this one: A man is arrested in the parking lot of a Binghamton, New York supermarket, moments after spray painting anti-war graffiti all over a decommissioned F-15 fighter jet. (The plane was being used as a recruiting tool for the Air Force.) No one from the Binghamton Press was there and I sold my very first image.

Okay, done. Let's see if my old friend Paul Gero will play next. You're it, Paul.

Matt

Tell it to the Marines

In my "former" life I spent a lot of time with members of the military, from being part of the first embedded combat pool during the invasion of Panama to the two months I spent in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the Gulf War. I've flown cross-country with a squadron of stealth fighters (I was in a KC 135 tanker) and hung out of helicopters as they chased camels across the barren desert. Needless to say, I have great respect for these men and women. In fact, this year's Photo Marathon will benefit two families who lost husbands and fathers in the current war in Iraq.

It's always great fun photographing military weddings and last Saturday didn't disappoint. Christine Vanderbeek, who can't speak more than seven words without laughing about something, married Nick Weber, who hails from the largest family I've ever run across, in a wonderfully joyous ceremony at the chapel on Fort Belvoir. (Let's cut to the chase: Nick has 15 brothers and sisters, the youngest of whom are so adorable and funny that I found it hard not to photograph them.)

As always, I could tell we were in for a fun day by the relaxed atmosphere at the Vanderbeek family home in Fairfax Station. Christine had her hair done with her dog at her side. Her dad was watching Clint Eastwood get one of the all-time great movie shaves in "High Plains Drifter." No chaos, no stress, only laughter. And as we walked outside to leave for the church, I looked around for the requisite limo or town car. Par for the course, Christine instead hopped into her dad's Jeep Wrangler and off they went, laughing down the drive.

Nick's family is much the same. On Friday night before the wedding, I met them all over at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I in Washington, the oldest post in the Corps, to watch Nick march in the evening parade. Established in 1801, the barracks has been the home of every commandant of the Marine Corps. In fact, the commandant's home was mysteriously spared by the British during the war of 1812, despite the fact that much of Washington burned around it.

Now, much of the evening parade at the post is performed long after sunset. And even though there are spotlights, trying to pick one Marine from a few hundred other Marines in the dark is not exactly a piece of cake. Luckily I had Nick's siblings to help out.

"Third from the left, back row!"whispered little Theresa.

"No, the other back row!"said little Tony.

"Definitely last guy, last row, by the bushes," came a third response.

Easy.

(And believe it or not, I nailed the picture as he marched by. I actually surprised even myself.)

I always thought I came from a large family, having four siblings. But 16? Wow. And Nick told me he couldn't ever remember a single fight between any of them. (OK, I just made that last sentence up.)

******

Okay, gang, I'm going to wrap this up. I've got a couple of more make-up posts to work on. As I said earlier, the new site is up and running, albeit a tad slowly--we hope to iron that out shortly--and there's a lot of cool stuff to look at there. I also just realized that we never had a proper coming out party for our new logo, which we've been using for the last few months. I'll make an official roll-out shortly.

And lastly, my friend Rachel LaCour just "tagged" me with this "8 Things You Didn't Know About Me" game. I am going to resist the initial urge to be grumpy, as I normally do with chain letters and the like, and will be a good sport. I really enjoyed reading Rachel's answers to the same question, particularly her final response about hand-written letters, and I will post mine shortly.

See ya,


Matt

p.s. As always, double click on all the images for better viewing.

Playing catch up

As usual, I'm running a bit behind on the bogging front, so I had better get my act together. There are a lot of things happening around here, from weddings to web sites (basically, from w to w), so here goes.

Two weekends ago I had the privilege of photographing the wedding of Rochelle Ochs and John Adams (no, not that John Adams) on the Chesapeake Bay. There's always a little bit of added incentive when a bride or groom come from an artistic background, and with John and Rochelle it was doubly the case. John is an accomplished painter whose work has been exhibited in galleries around the northeast. His work is very complex and you can view it here. I'll let John's artist's statement speak for itself:

"The repetitive meditative action is reflected in the work. Tension between the atmospheric random marks and the regulated rhythm of horizontal lines creates a visual vibration, which resonates endlessly (confined to the object none the less). In other paintings, the structural lines take the form of a drip, forming a counterpoint for the chaotic mark making. Juxtaposing a textural, physical paint surface with a slick, subtle panel may also form tension which draws the viewer in. Sometimes radio code and call numbers (from HAM radio magazines from the mid twentieth century) form a layer of atmosphere, teetering between abstract mark and letter or numeral."

I'm glad I let him say that!

Rochelle spends her days as I do--looking at pictures for a living. She's a photo editor at AOL, where several of my old USA Today buddies work. People will sometimes ask if there's more pressure shooting the wedding of a photography professional. I honestly find that it's less pressure thing than a simple desire to please someone who appreciates good photography.

(Truth be told, there was one funny moment that perhaps only a photo editor bride would have appreciated: during their ceremony, the sun began to set, leaving Rochelle in full golden light and John, two feet away, in utter shade. This is a frequent occurrence at outdoor ceremonies, where a bride and groom are facing each other. Someone has to be in the light, right? As the officiant asked people to greet their neighbors, and commotion ensued, I motioned to Rochelle to move her position a foot to the right. I figured if any bride would have understood, she would.)

Rochelle and John had a glorious summer day for their event. Their ceremony was all of ten feet from the Chesapeake. Afterwards we found some glistening wheat grass and made some nice family pictures. Rochelle's dad was beaming as he watched for a nearby bench. He's a wonderful man.

Given that we were practically on top of the water, I asked one of the ladies from the reception venue if there was away to get down to the beach. She looked at me like I was from Mars, though the question still doesn't strike me as odd, given where we were. Ah, liability concerns, 'ya gotta love 'em. Without skipping a beat, and to the apparent horror of said reception lady, I yelled to some folks on the neighboring property and asked if we could come over and take some pics. "Sure can!" came the welcoming response. And so we all traipsed on over, Rochelle in heels, maneuvering past the endless rows of stacked crab pots, down the rickety dock that extended over the water. Those folks were so sweet, constantly asking us if we wanted a beer. It never hurts to ask, right?


Matt

p.s. The web site is back in action: www.mattmendelsohn.com. There are some issues with loading times on some of the galleries, particularly the image-heavy wedding section. We hope to get these loading times corrected next week. But everything else is fully functional.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Save the Date for Photo Marathon '07

Okay, gang, mark those calendars: Photo Marathon '07 will take place on Sunday, September 30 in Old Town Alexandria.

Photo Marathon is our annual event of giving, something we started a few years back with the death of Michael Kelly in Iraq, a great journalist and brother of a dear friend. We raised almost $14,000 for the college funds of Michael's two young sons that first year, in one very long day of shooting portraits. Subsequent fundraisers for Tsunami victims and multiple sclerosis raised another combined $20,000. Now it's time to step up again and do some good.

Regular readers of The Dark Slide will remember that I had little trouble finding a worthy beneficiary for this year's event. Early this year, Capt. Brian Freeman, 31, of Temecula, California, was killed in Iraq, leaving a wife, Charlotte, a 14-month-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. What made Capt. Freeman's death leap off the pages of a long profile in the Washington Post this past January was not that he was courageous officer, of that he had graduated from West Point, or even that he used to race bobsleds and skeletons.

No, what made Brian Freeman's life exceptional was his heart. For the last six months of his life, Capt. Freeman, in addition to his regular duties in Iraq, worked tirelessly to obtain a visa for a sick 11-year-old Iraqi boy in desperate need of heart surgery in the United States. Just as the visa he had worked so hard to secure was approved, Capt. Freeman was kidnapped and executed.

I invite all of you to read the emotional piece about Capt. Freeman here in the Washington Post, as well as this follow up story about Charlotte Freeman meeting the boy after his successful surgery in New York.

But there's more to the story.

A few months back, when I originally posted about our intent to help Capt. Freeman's family with our next, then-unscheduled Photo Marathon, the first person to chime in with an offer to help was one of my former brides, Julie Newell. I wasn't surprised.

Julie is my only bonafide blog groupie. I can always count on her to say "great post," or to make some sarcastic comment, or to direct me to the latest in terrible wedding trends (brides underwater was the last one) and even more terrible wedding photography. It was Julie who first alerted me, several years ago, to the phrase "Bridal Industrial Complex," a moniker that always makes me smile. And on top of this, Julie had a fantastic wedding, to Nathan Leslie, one that I continue to mine for pictures for various slide shows, websites, etc.

Anyway, a few months ago Julie asked if I would do an early shoot for this year's Photo Marathon, for a friend of a friend. She said she knew we hadn't scheduled anything for certain yet, but this friend's husband had been killed in Iraq and she was coming to town for the renaming ceremony of a United States Post Office in his name. I was happy to oblige and that's when I got a chance to meet Deb Petty and her adorable sons, Oliver and Owen.

Like Capt. Freeman, Capt. Christopher Petty was also killed in January, a year earlier in 2006, when a roadside bomb exploded. Moreover, just like Brian Freeman, Christopher Petty was involved in a humanitarian effort at the time of his death; he was en route to check on the progress of a school rebuilding project when his convoy was ambushed. You can read all about Christopher Petty here, on his Arlington National Cemetery memorial website.

It was a pleasure to accommodate Deb and her boys at the studio a couple of months ago. That's Oliver up top, very cute and very patriotic. And as I've said many times before, never mess with the karma. And so I'm happy to report that the Petty boys' college fund will be a co-beneficiary of this year's Photo Marathon.

Two good men, and four little children who will be lucky to count on your support.

I know that within an hour or two of posting this, I will receive an email from Julie Newell asking how she can help. It's the best part of my job--all of my brides and grooms turn into great friends.

Once we figure out the logistics for the funds, I'll post some info here. In general, the Photo Marathon on 9/30 will operate just like in the past: Everyone coming to the studio will make at least a $250 contribution. In return, I'll shoot a cool portrait. This is speed photography at work, all for a good cause. In past years we've had kids, dogs, families, you name it (see above). We've used vintage cameras, old Polaroid film, whatever. We'll figure it out. You won't get an hour with me--more like seven minutes--but remember, the main thrust on this day is giving, not getting.

Save the date!

Matt