Greg Gibson Photography – Washington, DC’s Top Rated Wedding Photojournalist »

My wife just came home and told me she can’t bear to listen to the radio or watch television today.

It’s just too hard.

In the parking lot at a local Home Depot, she literally had to sit in the car a few minutes and compose herself before going into the store. She become emotional during the short drive listening to broadcasts of the services honoring the victims on this statewide day of mourning. While we didn’t know any of the shooting victims, this story carries substantial personal significance to us because we live in Chantilly, Virginia, which is also home to the alleged gunman, Cho Seung-Hui. Technically we live in Centreville, but that’s more an issue of zip code than reality. My kids all go to Chantilly schools.

Cho and two of his victims attended nearby Westfields High School. My kids will all attend Chantilly High School. Despite the small difference in geography, kids from both high schools generally know each other well, having participated in youth sports, clubs and other extra curricular and community activities together.

The thing that upset my wife the most, given even the enormity of this tragedy, is the fact that this is yet one more in a string of terrifying and horrific events that our children and other families in this area have had grapple with over the past 6 years.

It started in March of 2001 with the shooting of local college student and former Chantilly High student Danny Petrole. Petrole, a good natured and popular local kid from a respected family was shot 9 times while sitting in his car in the driveway of his home in nearby Manassas. Turns out that Petrole was a major player in the suburban drug trade of marijuana and ecstasy. He was killed by a couple of local acquaintances in what police believe was some kind of drug related disagreement over money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of marijuana and ex were found in Petrole’s home, as well as thousands of dollars in cash. Not only is one local youth is dead, one is serving a life term in prison, and another is on Death Row awaiting exectution.

Shortly thereafter came the 9/11 tragedy that shook us all, as well as the long aftermath including the military actions in Afghanistan and the start of the second Gulf War.

Barely one year later the Washington area was terrorized by the DC Sniper shootings in which a man and a teenage boy went on a random killing spree spread over 23 days leaving 10 people dead and three others wounded.

Just last year, another Westfield High student, Michael Kennedy, went to the local police department, less than a mile from the school and opened fire, killing two police officers. Six months later 5 Amish school children were murdered in neighboring Pennsylvania, where we occasionally take our kids for weekend getaways.

The war in Iraq continues to lurk beneath the surface as friends, parents and neighbors continue to be called into duty whether in the military, government agency, law enforcement, or the private sector.

Now this. It’s hard to imagine how two kids from the same high school, the same neighborhoods and so close the to same age could go so far astray in committing these types of heinous crimes in such a relatively short time.

I heard someone say on the radio yesterday that Centreville will be forever stigmatized by these events. That perhaps people will leave the area and outsiders will wonder what kind of values we are instilling in our children, or perhaps even worse yet, that something is just simply wrong with us all.

As the father of three boys, two of which are teenagers, all I can only say is that we simply do the best we can. I wish there were concrete answers and facts. We do our best to teach our children right from wrong, to teach them love and respect for God and for each other, and put them on the path to becoming responsible adults. However, as parents, all we can do is show them the way. We can’t live their lives and make all the choices. At some point kids have to make their own decisions about the friends they keep and the lives they choose to lead.

I see my friends and neighbors working hard and sacrificing to be a part of their children’s lives. I’m proud of my community and happy where I live. This whole sequence of events leaves us all confused, troubled and sad for everyone affected.

I mourn for the victims today. Not only for the victims at Virginia Tech, but also for these other tragedies that have so affected and influenced our community. I also mourn for the Petrole family, the Kennedy family and the Cho family. One can only imagine the kind of grief, remorse, shame and internal self-examination they must undergo every single day as parents of children who have inflicted so much pain on others.

Today, we are All Hokies.

One of the really nice things to come out of my WPPI presentation was the reinforcement of the great group of friends I am so blessed to have.

My good buddy Matt Mendelsohn flew out to Las Vegas from Washington just to be there to support me. Matt got in late Saturday night and on Sunday I realized that I needed someone to introduce me. Since Matt is one of my closest friends in the world, it was only natural that he would be my first choice.

Now those of you that know Matt also probably know that we very lovingly sometimes call him the “Soup Nazi” as he can be a bit of a curmudgeon from time to time. Naturally, for two days I had to endure Matt’s griping about me asking him to do the intro on the day before the presentation and what a pain in the a** it was on such short notice! I didn’t mind though, because, you see, there are a few things I know about Matt.

For one, he is a great writer. He comes by it naturally. His brother Daniel recently published a best selling and award winning book, The Lost, which chronicles the lives of their family members that were killed in the Holocaust. His sister Jennifer is also an outstanding journalist and author.

For two, Matt doesn’t do anything halfway. I knew that even though he would gripe about it just to annoy me, when it came down to it, he would do an outstanding job!

Let me just tell you that Matt’s introduction blew me away! Not only did it bring a little tear to my eye, it also made me nervous because as I walked up onto the stage I was afraid the presentation wouldn’t live up to the intro! Talk about a hard act to follow!

Since it’s not very often that people say such nice things about me, I thought I would post Matt’s introduction and share it with those of you who couldn’t be there.

Good Evening.

My name is Matt Mendelsohn and I am a photographer from Washington, DC. It’s a great honor to be introducing tonight’s speaker.

I have known Greg Gibson for 21 years now, essentially my entire professional career.

Though both Greg and I are primarily known as wedding photographers these days, that certainly wasn’t the case back in 1987, when we were both younger, thinner and less follicly challenged photographers working for a legendary – albeit dying – wire service called United Press International.

Though layoffs were routine and paychecks were known to bounce, I think it is fair to say that those formitive years at UPI were incredibly instrumental in shaping the way we approach weddings more than two decades later.

And I’m not talking about technique either. A photographer working at a wire service in those days had only two options every time he went out on a story: make the picture or fail. There were no runner up prizes when your competitor’s picture was on the front page of every newspaper in America. Only the dreaded phone call from New York.

Today we in the wedding business talk about wooing clients and wooing coordinators, and having fancy red sofas in our studios. But back then, Greg and I had a boss who I once had the following phone conversation with:

“Newspictures, Matt Mendelsohn.”
“Is Alan Papkin there?”
“No, I’m sorry, can I take a message?”
“Tell him he’s a fucking asshole.”

Like I said, not exactly a coddling kind of place to work.

Those kind of conditions make or break photographers, and in the case of Greg Gibson, it was certainly the former. After UPI, I went on to USA Today, and Greg went on to an amazing career at the Associated Press, one that includes not one, but TWO Pulitzer prizes. We spent years covering the White House together, freezing – day after freezing day - staked out in front of some courthouse or another, and even spent some quality time lounging around the Dharan International Hotel during the first Gulf War.

But the time I enjoy most with Uncle Greg, as my four year-old daughter calls him, are our weekly lunches at the Rhodeside Grill in Arlington, Virginia, where he always gets the soup, and the countless IMs – and I do mean countless – at 2am in the morning, where we alternately discuss curve layers or whether Jack Bauer really would have known how to download that atomic bomb schematic on his cell phone.

Greg’s one of the most generous people I’ve ever known – always willing to help young photographers learn and grow. One of the frequent topics of discussion at our weekly Rhodeside lunches is the inability for a lot of younger photographers to understand the importance of the decisive moment. Back in 1992, during the first Presidential Debate between George Bush, Ross Perot and Bill Clinton, President Bush famously glanced at his watch. It looked like he was bored and many people say that he lost the election in that single instant. As many times as I look back at my negs from that night, I can’t make that instant appear. Greg just smoked my ass.

So when we talk about decisive moments, tonight you could not have a better teacher in that regard.

And so it’s with great pleasure that I introduce my best bud, Greg Gibson…

Thanks dude…I’ll never be able to express how much your words meant on such a special night for me.

Just got home last night from a spring break vacation with my family in Puerto Rico. I wanted to post quickly to let everyone know that I survived my WPPI experience. Speaking was a blast and I had a great crowd. Once I get caught up a bit I’ll be posting some thoughts about WPPI as well as a few things from my vacation.

I also want to take a minute to thank everyone who came out and supported me in Las Vegas. I have a fantastic group of friends who did everything from introducing me at the presentation to carrying boxes of prints from one hotel to another. I feel very blessed!

Stay tuned!

greg