For an Assignment About Camping at Walmart, the Photographers Had to Camp Out, Too
At some point, George posted that he was thinking about quitting skateboarding because he didn’t have anyone to skate with,
and I responded, saying, “You should come out with us more.” Eventually we adopted him into our little skate crew, and then he took over and got better than everyone else.
When it came to assigning a story about the culture of camping in Walmart parking lots, I knew from firsthand experience
that sending two photographers would be better than sending someone out solo.
The ask — spend four days sleeping in the back of a rental van in parking lots throughout the South — required
that they both be willing to tolerate discomfort, ranging from slight inconveniences to full-blown back pain.
MB: There was a whole lot of downtime as we got into the wee hours of the night
in Savannah, Ga., just hoping for someone to pull into the parking lot.
The officers were unclear on the legality of not allowing us to shoot there, but said
that the Walmart security team had the right to tell us to leave.
I came up with the idea of setting up two LEDs on a stand, getting the light dialed in
and then moving them around to shoot lit portraits of the R. V.s themselves.
At first we were looking for areas that had a lot of Walmarts,
but then we switched tactics and tried sparse areas where travelers stopping for the night might be more concentrated.