TORONTO - "You got it?" James Franco asks me.
"Just one more," I say, snapping of a few more photos, all the while knowing I've made my shot about five minutes ago.
"Thanks," I say, and Franco nods and heads off to sign autographs for shrieking 16-year-old girls, who are yipping and bouncing like a Yorkshire terrier on crack.
And I'm left thinking, "I just bossed Franco, the guy on the cover of Esquire, and he listened."
All part of the job, I guess.
Being a red carpet photographer is a glamorous by proxy job. You're sometimes literally inches from the biggest stars in the world (Natalie Portman bumped into my lens!), and some of Hollywood's most powerful players are asking you for favours (the chairman of Fox Film entertainment had me take his photo with Franco and director Danny Boyle.)
On the other hand, you're part of a pack of fame-ravenous hyenas, barking ("Megan Fox, do something sexy! Over your shoulder, over your shoulder!") and howling at celebrities with little regard for self-respect and decency.
But it's a long way from paparazzi style ambushes. As a red carpet photographer, your credentials have been checked and double-checked and at this year's TIFF, you have to RSVP via email for permission to show up.
Publicists are there to help you, which is needed when screenwriters and producers show up. While photographers in from L.A. seem to know everyone on the carpet on a first-name basis, local shooters are often whispering among each other.
"Should I shoot this person, are they important?"
These situations often lead to awkward encounters. A black, tinted car rolls up and the flashes start firing, and then a low groan goes out and the flashes stop, when a frumpish 30-something writer emerges.
No wonder screenwriters are so bitter. There's no movie without them, but the pretty people pictures don't include them.
By showing up on the red carpet, celebrities (especially the starlets) know they are there to feed the publicity machine and do more than their share to help photographers get the best shot.
Depending on your talent level (and I have no problems with saying mine is at the lower end) and how early you arrived to secure a good spot on the carpet, the difficulty of these shots varies.
A premiere such as Passion Play (Megan Fox, Bill Murray, Mickey Rourke) has about 40 photographers literally hanging off each other in a space five metres wide, with camera lenses poking between every possible nook and cranny.
Mark Messier-esque elbows are delivered and many a perfect shot is ruined by someone's arm jutting into your frame. A good shot is always there, but you have to be ready. Sometimes you miss it and you know it (Portman, sniff sniff) and other times you know right away you got one to be proud of (Fox, who is already Photoshopped in real-life, so it's kind of cheating).
(Josh Visser / CTV.ca)
Then again, you also have red carpets such as Franco's "127 hours," where only five photographers show up and suddenly you are in the driver's seat. The celebs take their time and allow each shooter to tell them when they were done. It's luxurious.
There's a lot of waiting on the carpet, and for that reason, there's a lot of shop talk. A lot of complaining about celebrities with their precious schedules, talk of drinking prowess and most of all, much jockeying about by older guys to establish themselves as the Alpha male on the carpet.
This leads to me to the following story.
A tender, gender divide
Photography, along with professional sports and oil rigging, is one of the few remaining professions that is utterly dominated by men. If the media is a high school cafeteria, photographers are the football team.
I just so happened to walk in to the red carpet area with one of those female photographers at one premiere, and within a few minutes, a male colleague pulled me aside.
"Are you with that cute photographer you came with?" he asked me.
"No, she's with (such-and-such publication)," I replied.
"No, I meant with-with, and if not, I want to ask her out," he said.
(For the record, I'm not and he didn't.)
That photographer probably wasn't the only one with such an idea, as women were outnumbered about 10-1 at least on the red carpet. Male photographers, predominantly between the ages of 28 and 43, were tripping over themselves to offer up completely unnecessary camera advice or their sought-after stepladders to their female counterparts.
This is pretty sexist, I have to add. I could have best benefited from some free photography help. Thanks for nothing, jerks.
Single ladies, go to photography school. You'll never lack for attention.
