Lou O’ Bedlam’s Friday Feature: Morgan White

By Lou Noble on August 7th, 2009

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Originally, shooting Morgan was a matter of competition.

Now normally, I am an extremely lazy man. So lazy, in fact, I have cloaked myself in the title of hedonist, that I might have a comprehensive philosophy for my unwillingness to do anything even slightly less than what it is I want to be doing at that particular moment.

But sometimes, sometimes I get that competition in me. I hear its song, I gotta dance.

I’d seen another photographer use Morgan and thought, almost instantly, “oh, I can do better than that.”

Taking pictures, in and of itself, is a compulsion for me.  I have to do it.  I’ve spent the last few weeks taking precious few pictures, and it’s had a serious effect on my mood.

But shooting Morgan, as I did last Saturday, as I did a year ago when we first met, that focused my attentions, quieted everything else in service of working towards taking a good photo.

I’ve shot her on half a dozen occasions since we first met, since I first saw those photos of her and was driven, not only photograph her, but do a better job than the one I’d seen her in, intially.

It’s that drive Morgan and I have in common.  That particular something we not only love to do, but want to do to the exclusion of most other things.  That passion for something. Passion that all too many people, I’ve found, live without, or in ignorance of.

Morgan, at the age of 23, is a feature coordinator at Twentieth Century Fox, developing films pretty much during all of her waking hours.

At first, when she told me how old she was, and what she did, I was more than a little flabbergasted.  So young! So successful!

But I’ve come to realize this dame loves to work.  Loves it.  Even though she gets swamped, folks calling all week & weekend, she would rather be working than hanging around the house. Rather be working than taking it easy on a beach with a short but well-written novel.  Rather be working than…well, most things.

You see her on paper, and you can’t figure it.  You think it was luck.  Too young.

But you see her in action, see her intensity, the look of joy on her face when she’s talking about projects she’s putting together, you realize she’s made for the business, in the best possible way.

What’s even more rare? She’s not a jerk.  I’ve known her just over a year, so it’s still quite possible I’m wrong, but for a lady as busy as she gets, to take the time out of her weekend to have li’l ol’ me take pictures of her, drive her all over town, make her stand still while I focus my old-timey camera, ask her all sorts of questions about her life and The Business and what project she’s working on and to tell me how that movie is that hasn’t come out yet (which she didn’t do, what, you want her to get fired? That’s messed up, man), and do it all with a smile?  Lady’s got a heart of gold.

I suppose at this point I could go on about how preternaturally stunning she is, how what you see in the photos is exactly how she looks in person (a quality I am extremely drawn to as a photographer), how there is a delicacy to her look that is able to embody both a quiet vulnerability and a ferocity that’s…yeah, that’s also quiet.  Which is to say, she looks at the camera, she’s not trying to stare it into pieces.

But all the looks in the world wouldn’t have gotten her where she is.  That was her passion, her love of her work and desire to do it well.

It’s passion that keeps me taking photos, that makes me try to do better than others.  That passion, it sometimes turns me towards competition, to not only taking a good shot, but a better shot than someone else.  Might be a character flaw, but it put me in Morgan’s path, so it can’t be all that bad.