$50,000 a SHOOT!!!!

So Bjoern brought me to the Christmas Party at Nardulli, his photo lab.

It was intimate, but mind-blowing. We got there and immediately the caterer people (from some Thai restaurant called Poon Pepper or something) were hounding us to eat their delicious food. No complaints there.

Fried Wontons, Spring Rolls, Chicken and Beef Satay, Breaded shrimps, Sushi...I was a bad bad boy.

Met lot of interesting people. Met a ton of photographers. One woman, Belinda Rolland, does paparazzi-type event photos but specializes in photographing pregnant women and babies. Another dude, MichaelDar, is gay, awesome, and does more fashion-y stuff. And some other guy whose name I forgot but who also seemed gay specialized in "environmental celebrity portraiture" whatever that means.

I love Bjoern.

I then also met this guy Chad Doreck who was very cute but works as a voiceover artist for a Nickelodeon show called "My Life As A Teenage Robot" and is also the narrator for all the E! shows like "101 Juiciest Hollywood Hookups" and "101 Biggest Celebrity Oops!". Got lots of interesting voiceover tips and tidbits that I'm sure will be useful to my other voiceover artist friends. (Goony, try cold-calling random agents at say...William Morris... and just saying, "Hi, so I booked a national Citibank commercial and wanted to meet with you to see if you'd like to represent me." Basically that's how he got started after he stumbled into his first gig...)

So yeah, all that was very awesome, but the absolute highlight of the evening was when the Nardulli brothers (who own the place) brought me and Bjoern into the backroom of the place to give us a sneak preview of MatthewRolston's new portfolio, hot off the press. Each of the one hundred or so pictures were inkjet printed on poster-sized pieces of parchment and it was all just stored in a big fancy box for whoever it is sent over to to flip through. Basically costing hundreds of dollar PER portfolio to be sent to the editors of Vogue, Elle, etc.

MatthewRolston, for those who don't know, is like one of the best photographers EVER (in my opinion). Bjoern thinks he sucks and is too politically correct. But I love him.

It was so amazing to hang out and mingle with photographers that are actually SUCCESSFUL but feel like they've plateau-ed and are bored and stressed out making over $1,000 a day and trying to get to the next level where they instead work once a week and make $50,000 a shoot.

Anyway...the party ended. I drove a drunken Bjoern home while he rambled on about how his wife (who lives in Colorado getting her Ph.D) drunk dials him on weekends after she goes out with her girlfriends.

Went home. That was my night. It was neat.