Easter

I spent the night photographing mass, the evening before Good Friday, in Little Italy.

There was some confusion since I had been told people would be dressed up in preparation for the big Good Friday parade taking place the next day. There was supposed to be a Jesus, a cross, horses and Roman soldiers but I didn't get any of that.

Instead, I tried to figure out the game plan for how mass rolls out so that I could anticipate where to stand to get shots I wanted. Unfortunately asking how the ceremony unfolds only provoked awkward questions like, "How don't you know how it works?" which forced me to explain that I was not Catholic. This caused much anxiety among the congregation members, who all seemed to suddenly developed super sonic hearing and immediately ran over to bombard me with questions.

"Are you Anglican? Baptist? Jewish?"

Not wanting to get into a gigantic discussion about my faith (or lack thereof) I just smiled politely, laughed like I was a giant idiot and immediately changed the topic by blurting out, "I cheer for the Italian team during the World Cup!" Where did that come from?!?!?

Most awkward change of topic ever.

Still, this made everyone happy and I was allowed to slink away, feeling shame that I had lied - in a church on the eve of their most important religious holiday no less.

Since I didn't get an answer about the roll out, this meant that I was constantly standing in the wrong place during the ceremony, occasionally provoking small facial ticks on the priest's face, which were directed at me to indicate, "There are people coming down the aisle behind you!" or "Move a little to the left so that I can walk down the aisle now!"

On the way out of the church he smiled and joked with me, asking where his commission was for the shoot. I was relieved. Obviously I didn't offend anyone.

My greatest fear while shooting is to suddenly draw attention to myself in a way that causes the event I'm shooting to grind to a halt. So far I have been lucky. No giant gaffes in public yet.