Homeless Monopod

Never underestimate a transient...

My friend Jeff was a big help at today's shoot. He helped mostly with lighting and posing. We shot at an empty building just off of I-10 here in El Paso. This place has been out of use for many years now, so it's no surprise when we saw a transient at the other end of building. Jeff and I have shot at other locations where transients are present, and we've been very lucky that they simply keep their distance, as do we. Today was no different. We did our shoot and the man at the other end didn't move from his declared place of rest. We finished up the shoot, packed up, and went to our next location.

When we began to set up at our new location Jeff said, with a lot more calm that I would have, that he forgot his monopod that we used to hold one of my strobes, as seen in this image above. Say what you want about Jeff, but he did not waver from the task at hand..."Let's just shoot, and I'll go back for it later", he said.

We finished shooting at the second location, which wasn't too far away from the first, and I was to meet Jeff where he left his monopod. When I drove up, Jeff was walking from the area where the transient was and toward his car. I instinctively joked about the transient having taking it...it turns out he did indeed have it!!! He told Jeff that he figured we would come back for it, so he held on to it. Jeff gave him a couple of bucks and said thanks.

I guess it could be taken either way; he could have been holding it for Jeff, or he was just hoping we forgot about it...I'd like to think that there still some good in this world, so I'm gonna go with the "good" assumption.

What's funny, is that we ended up by the mountains for our final shoot, and we had to hike up some rocks to get the shot we wanted. We were away from our vehicles and some equipment when Jeff says, "Better be careful, there are no bums around here to watch our stuff".