Red Truck Road Trip – WEST Coast Team

Would you like to know why photographers don’t have more friends? It’s because most of us get sick and tired of waiting around for them to finish up. Let me explain how the photographic process works:

• While walking with company, said photographer notices something that catches his attention (kind of like how a magpie is distracted by anything shiny). This is often demonstrated by dropping a conversation in mid-sentence and suddenly looking mildly autistic.
• Photographer asks the group to “hold on for just one second, I really want to get this shot.”
• Camera Boy then proceeds to move to five different positions because, “I want to get a good angle.”
• A series of poses are assumed that happen to look utterly ridiculous to anyone moving past the group. The photographer, of course, doesn’t notice the weird looks he’s receiving from passers by while he flounces around looking like a drunken ballerina attempting a particularly difficult interpretation of Swan Lake. He also doesn’t notice that his associates are desperately trying to pretend they don’t know him… that or they’re simply dying from shame because he’s too clueless to have the good grace to do so.
• Our intrepid picture-taker breaks out his tripod and sets it up so he can have a steadier photo (note: this is optional. If such a step is followed, assume that there’s an additional five minutes to this whole scenario).
• After taking somewhere from 30 to 50 pictures, the photographer then moves to the shade and proceeds to review the images on his camera’s LCD screen before he finds one picture that he’s satisfied with and decrees that the entire group may now move on.
• Proceed about thirty feet. Repeat process.

Well, that or Mike just makes us all wait the entire 45 minutes for Old Faithful to erupt before we can go anywhere else. I’m still trying to figure out how taking a bunch of pictures of sulfur springs, geysers, and waterfalls is worth getting sunburned or getting out of the incredibly comfy bed in our cabin in West Yellowstone (seriously, it’s the only place in that town you should even consider staying at if you happen to visit the park). I’m still trying to figure out why we didn’t stay there for another night: Salt Lake City doesn’t sound like it’ll be nearly as much fun (for some reason, I can’t bring myself to trust Mike’s claim that Mormons love red wine), and I suspect that the women working at our next hotel won’t be anywhere as cute as those staffing the Hibernation Station’s front desk.

At least Mike didn’t try to get me killed during a photo session today. I’m not so certain about tomorrow: the guys keep on mentioning me in the same sentence as “hood ornament” and “Utah Salt Flats”.