Friday, December 7, 2012

The Robots - for the People

It was another fun evening.  I got some dancing in, and photos.  Here you go (the photos) . . .

































This night was also strange, in a very good way.  Earlier this year I had photographed Roy Waters jamming with The Robots.  It is one of my favorite photographs of a musician.  The soul Roy put into his music that night moved everyone.  This was also the first photograph I had enlarged to 24x36, and looks great.

About the middle of the year Roy showed up again.  I drove home as quick as I could to grab all the different size photos I had, including the poster size one, for The Robots to give to Roy in recognition of his friendship and music to the band, and me.  Here is the photo . . .



You can take a look at the entire photo set that night by clicking here.

Well, I brought the above framed 13x19 photograph to the JAM this night thinking someone might want it. I was actually thinking I could sell it (have only made around $60 this year). Photographing The Robots this evening, I totally forgot I had it in the car. On the way home I stopped at McDonald's, on Rt 30 in Schererville. The lady at the drive through window saw all the framed photos (another story some day why I had all those photos) and my camera, and asked if I was a photographer. I responded, "engineer by day, trying to be a photographer by night". As she was getting my change, I grabbed Roy's framed photograph (it was bouncing around in the front seat, thinking I would put it in a safer place after I had shown the lady the photo). I showed it to her, and she said she recognized it was Roy Waters. So I passed it through the drive through window and said "you can have it". She grabbed it, not even thinking to offer giving it back (because of the surprise and joy), and was very appreciative. She looked, and looked, and looked at it. You could see her smile growing. I drove up to the next window to get my food. I saw all of the workers coming over, jaws dropped, wondering what was going on. I don't know if she was crying, just plain super happy, or what. They all looked at me in wonder. Felt a bit weird. All I could do is say "thank you" (for my food) and drive off.


This gets back to my philosophy . . . the customer defines the quality. Not the person selling the goods. I choose not to price my work. If someone asks, I value my service at $200/hr. However, you, the customer, defines the value. You can reciprocate anyway you care. Even not at all. This also makes me reflect on a blog post I did on the musical "Ordinary Days", at the Towle Theater. To me, this play was the most powerful, that defines my motivation.




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