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