Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Dallas for the day? Okay!

I got in early Monday morning from my trip to California (flew in on the red-eye) got home, unpacked, showered, and headed to work.

When I walked in to work, the first thing anyone said to me was "Could you fly to Dallas today?" I said "sure, why not!" So I was literally at work for 1 hour, hurried off to pick up some drives and hopped on a plane to Dallas.The background story is there is a shoot happening in Patagonia this week, and the wrong equipment was sent to the shooter, and the only way he would be able to get the equipment in time was by having someone from New York (the only realistic place to purchase the equipment) purchase the drives, and fly them to Dallas where the shooter had a layover before hopping a plane to South America where it would take at least 8 days for the items to be delivered via mail, which would be too late.
So I get to Dallas and meet up with the shooter, who isn't just any shooter, but a wildlife photographer whose passion is filming Great White Sharks, who just recently finished a shoot in the Serengeti filming cheetah's with a super high speed camera, and is now on his way to Patagonia to film Killer Whales. !!!
(this is an actual picture of the shooter, Andy, filming a shark, click here for a link to his website)

Now THIS is the dream job that most people who mention "National Geographic Dream Jobs" are probably referring to. Well, I ended up having dinner with him and picking his brain, and the most incredible thing about it all was that about 7 years ago he was working at a desk job and hating it. After two years of that, he sought out a group of Great White Shark researchers in South Africa, which led to him volunteering for them and photographing sharks, which led to him filming sharks and being hired by entities like Nat Geo and Discovery.
So there you have it. The moral of the story: give it everything you've got, and you'll eventually get everything you want. You just have to want it enough.

5 comments:

Britt said...

Best story ever. haha I'm sure your time zones are all screwed up now :)

Courtney and Matt said...

what a fun job you have! I would love to do that kind of stuff - fly somewhere for the day just to bring someone something. So what does that mean - my dream job is a personal assistant??

thinkHP said...

I'm pretty much in love with shark man - even though I don't know him.

Anonymous said...

What an awesome job you have! So jealous! Pretty soon you will be blogging... "I had to fly to Paris for the day..."

Nancy said...

I love the message. I also love telling the story about the little girl that used to wear the National Geographic Photographer hat all the time....sound familiar?