Maria and I got up early this morning, to catch the sun and get creative early. Taking photographs of her with the animals is a wonderfully beautiful and affirming way to start the day for me. As I stood in the pasture, I watched the sun pop up over the apple tree.
The sun made me think of the rise and fall of the Big Shot on this day, which is turning out to be a special day. I am getting a new lens, a 16-35 mm medium zoom lens, an everyday lens, a lens I had once before and gave away, Big Shot that I was, in the days when I didn’t think much about money and buying a lens meant calling up my friend Neal at B&H Photo in New York, reading my Amex number and shipping it next day Fedex for just another $40 or so (with various filters and hoods and insurance policies). The next afternoon it was there, and I was shooting.The 16-35 is a perfect lens for me, it is fast, good in low light and loves to pick up soft color in light. Just my thing.
Heady days, before the divorce, before the recession, before the price of a book dropped to $9 or $10, and I was writing e-books for $2.99, before the real estate market left me with two farms, the other world. You all know the story, you are in it too, you are living it.
My world changed in 2009, a bunch of different storms, and one of the biggest changes for me is that the Big Shot was left stunned and shocked, confused by the new rules of the world he was suddenly living in. The Big Shot was over, it was humbling time, join the world, back to reality, the way I started. As it happens, the Big Shot was short-lived, I was not born with money and never really had much for most of my life. As Joseph Campbell says, when the mask comes off, you better know who you are.
For this Big Shot and for many others, it was sunset, not sunrise.
I had no time for shopping around, comparing prices, looking for discounts, haggling and trading. My life has changed, and mostly, I am the better for it. Many of my lenses have gone off to E-bay or other places for sale, but for the past month, I was determined to get another 16-35, it is a wonderful lens but it is also about $1,700 new. I can’t just pick up the phone and call Neal any longer. So I came up with a plan, I picked up the medium zoom a lens I have, the slower 24-105 and started shopping around for quotes to use it as a trade-in. The 24-105 is worth about one-third of the 16-35 so I had to shop around pretty carefully. I got a good quote for it from one used lens place, about $600. Send it in they say, and we’ll pay you for it or take it on a trade-in. I packed it up carefully, Maria helped me with bubble wrap and sent it off.
I used some of my blog subscription money in my Paypal account – this is what it’s for, to maintain the blog and photography and pay me for my work her – about $600, so I was two-thirds of the way. Then I checked about a dozen sites for prices. I found one good camera place on the West Coast that was offering a re-furbished version of the 16-35 for $1,200, not $1,600, and it was guaranteed in “excellent/like new” condition, the guarantee good for six months. I have never bought a used lens in my life, the Big Shot liked new and shiny stuff. But I found that between the lower price for the refurbished lens, the money from the subscriptions and the trade-in for the 24-105, I was just about there. It took a longer than it used to take the Big Shot, and it was some work, not just a phone call. But I think it meant all the more for that.
For a week, the lens I shipped out was lost, but it was found this week and my deal has gone through. My new lens is coming today.
It’s a funny thing about the Big Shot, I do miss him some days, things were often easier, yet in a curious way, I am so much more comfortable with myself and my life than I was then. Writers, even best-selling writers, have not traditionally been big shots, like artists and musicians, we live pretty much month-to-month and will not be buying any long term health insurance any time soon or fattening up our IRA’s for the long march to sunset.
It was fun scrambling around for my new lens, I am good at this, I feel connected to this lens and I know it will, as lenses always do, help me to see the world anew, to follow my passion for light and color and feeling. Emotional realism, I call it. I keep looking out the window for the Fedex truck, like a little kid waiting for his comics to arrive. If you live long enough and keep your eyes open, you just may find out who you are. I didn’t really like the Big Shot all that much.