Martha Stewart at Stew Leonard's

Yesterday I was asked by one of my client newspapers to photograph a book signing at Stew Leonard's, a local grocery store. Going to Stew's is as much an event as it is a weekly shopping expedition. For those who don't live near one of their stores, it may be hard to fathom that Stew's is indeed a *venue.*

So it wasn't a shock that Stew's guest would be Martha Stewart. Her new book is called "Martha Stewart's Cooking School."


The press was offered a 10-minute window at the start of the book signing to take photographs. I didn't recognize any of the handful of photographers there, which was a bit of a surprise, since the photojournalist community is pretty small around here. We run into each other from time to time on assignment, and it's a cordial group. Perhaps the event drew media from a bit further away.

In that ten minutes, there was plenty of time to capture a portrait of Martha with her book, as well as images of the first few customers who asked to have their book signed. As an assignment, it was easy. The atmosphere was friendly.

Something unexpected happened while we were making the quick portrait. We were all pointing our cameras at Stewart. Instinctively, I lowered my camera and waited until the other photographers were finished -- a matter of a mere few seconds, really. It's my habit to take turns, rather than blitz a person with shutter clicks.

I figure it's confusing to a person to try to decide which camera to look at. The momentary confusion can show on their face, which mars the image. Besides, if I clicked with all the others, most of my images, like theirs, would show a person looking at someone else's camera. Why take a bunch of images I'll never use and add to the confusion? So I waited my turn.

The unexpected thing was that while I was waiting, I realized that it didn't really matter that I waited. Stewart handled the situation with grace and ease, and gave every photographer a direct gaze, one at a time. In my experience, that's never happened before. It was a small thing, a fleeting thing, but I was impressed. Sure, it helped ensure the photographers got a good image, which helps with publicity. But it was also a courtesy, since the photographers could be on to their next job more quickly and the hundreds of waiting people would wait just a little bit less.

Two clicks from me -- one more than I ended up needing, in case she had blinked (she hadn't) -- and the portrait, seen above, was done.

This isn't the picture that ran in the paper today. The other ones -- the images that included customers -- captured the event better. But I like to give the editors choices.

I then left the book-signing area to look for crowd images. I ran into Terry, the grocery manager, who was restocking a display of the book to accommodate the growing crowd. He said they had ordered a thousand books for the two-hour book signing. "We might not have enough," he said. Here's Terry:


I made a few more crowd images, then headed on to my next assignment.