this morning, up at quarter to 4, yes, sadly, in the a.m. - being the morning gal on fridays once again now that football is winding down, i had the great duty of shooting Black Friday - done this a million times (okay, that's massive hyperbole, but you get the idea, i done it before, and more than once or twice!), we tried to find a family to follow ahead of time - they huddled on t-day to devise their strategy, but being an afternoon paper, a pre-event photo of an event that would have been done by the time we hit the stands, wasn't gonna make much sense, so we still had to cover the actual shopping aspect...so, set the alarm, call reporter, ask her to call me when she gets up just to be safe, sleep with cell phone very near head...alarm goes off, call comes in, and i'm up and i'm out, and there's a chill and it's misting, but nothing crazy, so i think, well, we're surely not getting the snow they forecasted....not that it matters, cos it turns out the family is going to walmart, who has decided that shoppers will line up inside this year after the stampeding death of last year - gonna get there around midnight to get in line, then stay in line for the 5 am checkout sale start - so we show up about 4:30, which is actually much later than i anticipated having to get there for this, but that's when they told us to come - turns out they'd finished shopping several hours ago (they really didn't have that much stuff in the cart actually, and i guess they did it super early, then just got a good space in line for the actual check-out time) - whatever, finally locate them, reporter is interviewing them now as i am trying to shoot - hard working on top of one another - i mean, we both have our jobs to do - about 25 minutes into it, a walmart associate approaches - "mam, you can't be taking any photos in here" - but we're just doing the usual black friday story, and we were just here for you grand opening with no problems ( when, in fact, every employee in the place was tripping over themselves to make sure that "i had whatever i needed" hmmm, does that include a new hdtv? or wireless router for my printer - cos i, personally, really need those, and just so long as you're asking....), and always in here for the annual shop with a cop and no problems --- well, apparently TODAY i have to contact their corporate media office, so i get the number and call - "thank you for calling the Walmart corporate media offices...we will not be accepting any calls from thursday thru sunday due to the heavy business of the season" - yeah, and isn't this pretty much really the media office's PRIME BUSINESS time? and they decide that they're too busy to deal with the media????? isn't that pretty much ALL you're there to deal with, in the designated media office, on the busiest, most reported-on media shopping day of the whole friggin year?!!!?!
so, out we go - reporter's got her story, and i do have some stuff we can use - there were such better pix there, maybe not necessarily of this particular family, but just general black friday pix, and i had gotten myself actually kind of geeked up to go out and make the best of it and bring back something pretty kick-ass, but apparently it was not to be...
anyway, at least this is kind of a nice moment of the event...this family has been doing the black friday thing for years after losing their grandfather and trying to come up with some way of getting together as a group in his honor.....and i guess nothing says "remember grandpa joe (or whatever his name actually was)" like engaging in a morning of crass consumerism!!!!!!!
(wow, i sound like a total b____ch! - no offense to them, just being a smart-ass!)
neglected to bring home some pix to post from the choir rehearsal pre-parade last weekend, so here they be - i especially liked al the eyes going in all directions in the one foto - not one for the story maybe, just something i liked as a moment unto itself
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