Last month I sat in the emergency waiting room of a thriving hospital, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cup of my pee in the other. Both were steaming. The pain in my lower back had gotten severe enough for me to go there at midnight. "This guy's already on antibiotics" exclaimed the doctor upon examining my computerized file, a more trusted source than my own testimony. The computer was correct, I had been on antibiotics for 10 days with no improvement; in fact, my kidney infection had gotten worse.

The first time I operated camera for Alejandro Adams was on a one-day documentary shoot in 2005 in an Oakland classroom. He said it was a multi-camera shoot so I figured it'd be me and a couple others. I showed up and he had 16 camera operators, all jammed into a tiny room to shoot a group of 8 people. We literally were stumbling over and crashing into each other!