My father sold cameras and was an amateur photographer. I got my first camera, a Brownie, for my 5th birthday. But around the same time, on the way back from the library, my mom started to teach me how to read. It was words that captured me, not images. Bookworm defined me. Plus I dabbled in music, on the viola, piano and the school choir. The roar of the grease paint, the smell of the crowd hooked me on show biz, albeit at the elementary school level.
Later the family left New York for Los Angeles where I went to UCLA, majored in political science, decided I’d never be Henry Kissinger, and started my first real job, in retail management, a few days after graduation.
But living in a company town like Hollywood, it seemed inevitable that I would be drawn to the entertainment industry. I worked with writers and comedians and helped to put on shows. I started shooting photos and sticking them into boxes. But after years in talent agency and production work, I hit my own glass ceiling and knew it was time for a change.
The moving target of the next step eluded me. In fact, it was a decade, after marriage, 2 kids, lots of volunteering where I wrote
newsletters and humor columns for a regional section of the Los Angeles Times and did publicity for nonprofit organizations,
that I saw a way .I’d mix words, sales and media from a home office as a publicist. My clients appeared in the New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, Self, Parent, Lucky, Architectural Digest, Men’s Health and online with CNN, MSNBC, USA Today and Sports Illustrated.
True to some inner 10 year schedule, as the kids moved on to college and beyond, it was transition time once again.
But I didn’t know if I had another transformation in me. I had filled many boxes with photographs that documented family life
and travel. I liked telling the story of an event via an image. I plastered the house with framed photos, while most of them, I must admit, remained in carefully dated boxes.
One evening I was the designated photographer for a dinner for a nonprofit food issues organization I was working with.
Struggling with lighting and shutter speed in the dimly lit dining room, I was appalled to see how blurry and just plain awful
the pictures turned out. It was time to read the instruction manual, to take classes, to put in the effort. I had the chutzpah,
I had the eye, I needed to know what I was doing.
So I got myself a ‘real’ camera, a DSLR, a bunch of books, bookmarked websites and signed up for classes at the local adult school. I carried my camera everywhere and made family and friends stop while I captured some building or flower. I struggled to remember to view my newbie efforts with the compassion of beginner’s mind and to breathe through nights frustrated by opaque technology that was anything but user friendly. After a year, I saw progress. The camera was not yet a tool, but was no longer an enemy, though currently Photoshop Elements and I have barely struggled to an uneasy truce. (UPDATE: make that Lightroom!)
I’m not so much coming back to the beginning but pasting another image on the vision board. If I had to come up with one word
to describe myself, I’d choose Student. And this website is my notebook. ~ Bobbi Rubinstein
Later the family left New York for Los Angeles where I went to UCLA, majored in political science, decided I’d never be Henry Kissinger, and started my first real job, in retail management, a few days after graduation.
But living in a company town like Hollywood, it seemed inevitable that I would be drawn to the entertainment industry. I worked with writers and comedians and helped to put on shows. I started shooting photos and sticking them into boxes. But after years in talent agency and production work, I hit my own glass ceiling and knew it was time for a change.
The moving target of the next step eluded me. In fact, it was a decade, after marriage, 2 kids, lots of volunteering where I wrote
newsletters and humor columns for a regional section of the Los Angeles Times and did publicity for nonprofit organizations,
that I saw a way .I’d mix words, sales and media from a home office as a publicist. My clients appeared in the New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, Self, Parent, Lucky, Architectural Digest, Men’s Health and online with CNN, MSNBC, USA Today and Sports Illustrated.
True to some inner 10 year schedule, as the kids moved on to college and beyond, it was transition time once again.
But I didn’t know if I had another transformation in me. I had filled many boxes with photographs that documented family life
and travel. I liked telling the story of an event via an image. I plastered the house with framed photos, while most of them, I must admit, remained in carefully dated boxes.
One evening I was the designated photographer for a dinner for a nonprofit food issues organization I was working with.
Struggling with lighting and shutter speed in the dimly lit dining room, I was appalled to see how blurry and just plain awful
the pictures turned out. It was time to read the instruction manual, to take classes, to put in the effort. I had the chutzpah,
I had the eye, I needed to know what I was doing.
So I got myself a ‘real’ camera, a DSLR, a bunch of books, bookmarked websites and signed up for classes at the local adult school. I carried my camera everywhere and made family and friends stop while I captured some building or flower. I struggled to remember to view my newbie efforts with the compassion of beginner’s mind and to breathe through nights frustrated by opaque technology that was anything but user friendly. After a year, I saw progress. The camera was not yet a tool, but was no longer an enemy, though currently Photoshop Elements and I have barely struggled to an uneasy truce. (UPDATE: make that Lightroom!)
I’m not so much coming back to the beginning but pasting another image on the vision board. If I had to come up with one word
to describe myself, I’d choose Student. And this website is my notebook. ~ Bobbi Rubinstein
