aafm.

Andrea Keller in her hotel room, Rwanda. 2010

I know a lot of brilliant, strong and independent women – hell, I fathered a child with one of the worlds best. Another woman the world should be grateful for is Andrea Keller. Andrea was the reason for my being in Africa. Months ago, she asked if I wanted to go to Rwanda and see the sites of two building projects she was designing there. Naturally, I said yes, lets go.

A little back story: I met Andrea in LA in 2006. She was then part of a “collective” called Black-something-or-other, I forget. Doesn’t matter. For reasons I still have never understood, I was asked to be part of the team/cult. I enlisted. A (very) short time later, I asked a few practical prying questions and was immediately asked to “disengage”. Ok. Simple. I left Blakkbox. Yeah, they were called Blakkbox. But Andrea and I remained friends. In fact, she became a great friend, and as goes with friends, you learn about the things that make them great. Great, right? So, to make her blush a bit, (and to express my gratitude) here’s what I’ve learned since ’06.

[Is it weird to summarize a person as a list? Yes, indeed. But it's a new tool I've been using in my notes, so lets employee it here, for Andrea.]

1. A dedicated mother. Two kids. Names, not your business.
2. A seriously talented architect, practicing out of Los Angeles, with projects currently in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dubai and Rwanda.
3. A brilliant and intimidating teacher (USC & Otis).
4. Has one of the most severely complex minds I’ve ever encountered.
5. Can’t drive to save her life.
6. Speaks English, Swiss, Italian, French and Spanish.
7. Wears terribly inappropriate shoes for basically every occasion.
8. Travels the entire fucking globe, with so much unnecessary luggage, you can’t possibly imagine.
9. She never makes mistakes when sending text messages. Never. Not one typo. I hate that part about her.
10. The best part – she’ll show you all of the above, in under a minutes time, while being absolutely fucking hammered. Barley and hops, malt – bottled beer. Whatever. Keep ‘em coming.

She’s just a force. A woman you should be only lucky enough to one day meet. Until then, you can read her blog, a for anything.

When traveling, I always have a camera fixed to the left-front strap of my backpack by using a carabiner, which I hook through the buckle-end of the shoulder strap on the side of the camera. I don’t like having a camera bouncing around on the center of my chest while navigating unfamiliar cities. The need to act quickly is of course important, and immediate access to your gear is necessary, but avoiding the painful bruising at the risk of losing 10 seconds of time seems reasonable — reasonable, until your “alternative solution” sends your camera smashing to the ground and rolling down a drainage canal.

This afternoon, while exploring a neighborhood in Kigali, my camera, along with a flash (a very old, plastic encased Vivitar 285) mounted on top of the cameras hot shoe, was sent crashing to the ground as I was jumping over a large irrigation ditch. There was no way around it, only over it. As I landed, the camera strap connected to the carabiner gave way. (This is the second time in a month, I should have learned the first time.) To my horror, the flash snapped clean off the camera, and the two rolled in different directions of each other. Minus a bent lens hood and some minor scratches, the camera was intact and surprisingly turned on. The flash mount had snapped clean off and was still on top of the camera. Also to my amazement, the flash turned on. The issue now was, I have a full day of portraits to do in the countryside tomorrow, and my flash no longer attached to the camera. I packed extremely light for this trip, and am working alone. All I could think was, “fuck, now what, there isn’t anyone I can ask to hold the flash for me, and even if I had radio slaves, the flash no longer has a base mount?” I really dislike the quality of the cameras built-in flash, and hadn’t packed a second Vivitar.

I walked back to the hotel furious with myself, carrying the pieces of plastic in my hands. Once back in my room I began going through the small bag of grip I had packed.

- 1 Super Clamp
- 1 Clamp extension rod
- 1 Long Pin
- 2 Hot shoe/Sync slave accessory mounts
- 2 Flash-to-sync cords
- 4 Zip ties

After some 25 minutes of trying a few different configurations, this is the admittedly ugly and unorthodox rigging I’m forced to use for the rest of the trip. By the look of it, the mounting angle of the flash held by the Super Clamp would seem like a highly inefficient and uneven use of light, but after a few tests shots, has proved to be beautiful. The quality of light is great, if not better than mounting the flash conventionally atop the camera. We’ll see how efficient it really is once put to use tomorrow. In the meantime…tragedy averted.