New (to me) Blog: A Photo Editor

Just learned of this (from the rejuvenated MultimediaShooter.com site): Rob Haggert, former photo editor at Men’s Journal and Outside Magazine, is blogging about life at the other end of the phone.

I’ve only read a few entries, but I’m feeding it into my NetVibes account. I’m quoting too much here, but under an entry titled “Magazines Behaving Badly” (about slow payments) he tells this tale:

One day I got a call from Mary Ellen Mark who’d recently shot a feature story for us. I was so proud that I’d landed her to shoot for the magazine and was so intimidated when I had spoken with her about the assignment and then when she’d called me from location to discuss the images she was getting and in general giving me an update on what was happening. Well, M.E.M. was not calling to tell me what a fabulous Photo Editor I was. No, she was calling to rip me a new one from head to toe because it had been over 90 days since she’d turned in a bill and had yet to receive payment and Christmas had passed and all those expenses we’d owed her would have come in handy. So, I sat there on the other end of the phone for a good 15 minutes possibly half an hour as Mary Ellen Mark shredded me into tiny little pieces and then stomped up and down on the pile of pieces and then loaded them into a cannon with a couple pounds of gunpowder and shot them out so they fell from the sky like confetti.

Having been a director of photography who had to take the calls about missing checks, I felt that pain. But never from a Mary Ellen Mark. (The rest of you, though – I felt that just as much.)