I am a camera by Bill Kay

This week I've seen more of camera lenses than I have for years, particularly if you exclude the sort that inhabit mobile phones. In fact, they didn't feature at all.
On Tuesday I appeared in the pilot for a new community TV show, Altadena Tonight! It couldn't have been more informal. The studio was the back room of Altadena's Coffee Gallery, which has long been a great local meeting place. The back room is used regularly for concerts and shows. It holds about 50 people plus a small stage, big enough for a band - plays would be a bit limited unless they were conversation pieces. You'd have to use your imagination to enjoy a version of Star Wars there, or even Henry V.
This time there was more lighting than usual, and three fixed cameras were discreetly installed right, left and centre, together with a mobile camera. The show wasn't structured for broadcast, instead the raw material was recorded for editing later. It consisted of a series of songs by Ian Whitcomb and the Bungalow Boys, Will Ryan and others, interspersed with Ian interviewing people such as the manager of the Gallery.
That was where Lynne and me came in. Ian, a long-time expatriate himself, asked us about why we emigrated to US, and why Pasadena and so on. We talked about my Sunday Times column and what I thought of the LA Times (I was as polite as I could be, blaming its troubles on the internet and Sam Zell).
It added up to a very pleasant evening. There were no calls for silence and the breaks every hour or so were an opportunity for the audience to load up on a free buffet outside - we had already eaten at Chandra Thai with our friends, Pat and Elaine.
It looks a very promising magazine show, very localised but very professionally produced. Whether it generates enough of an audience, or even gets aired on a channel anyone can get hold of, are open questions but I felt it deserved to succeed. I think they'll play around with it until it does.
Although I didn't think they'd come together in quite the way they did, for about a month the Sunday Times has been talking about new byline photos for all columnists as part of a massive colour-driven redesign which began with the July 6 issue. However the picture desk has been trying to save money by using old shots of me - hard to see how that would work, because the new design demands a new format for byline pics, three-quarter length, outlined and so on. But they persisted and the editor duly complained about the pic of me that appeared last Sunday, so the new shots had to be taken in a rush this week.
They used an agency in New York to find a photographer near me, and the girl probably thought that West Hollywood was pretty near Pasadena - it's a 40 to 60 minute drive, depending on the traffic.
It was fixed for Thursday afternoon, but as my car was out of action the photographer, Danny Rothenberg, kindly agreed to have me picked up and returned home. The shoot was great fun, in his patio, with lighting equipment and reflectors, and we got on well, with me going through several changes of clothing, pink and white collared shirts, a navy blue t-shirt, velvet jacket. Danny plays an unpublished John Lennon CD in the background. After an hour he decided he had enough and I was taken home by his assistant Emily's boyfriend, Sam, an engaging companion for two longish journeys.
At 6 the next morning an email and text message arrive from Danny. The Sunday Times aren't happy. They wanted the pics shot in a studio, against a white background, with 3/4 length as well as portrait.
In a flurry of phone calls I persuade Kathryn Cooper on the Money desk to let me put the cost of a return taxi fare on expenses, anything up to $200. And we do the whole thing all over again, although this time I only have the pink shirt and blue velvet jacket, with a tie as variation. We still make it fun, but the atmosphere is noticeably more subdued. I hang on until we get word from London that the Sunday Times are happy: I did not relish a third journey to West Hollywood.
I enjoy being photographed. I wasn't at all aware of the camera in the Coffee Gallery show, more concerned about the mike I had to hold. But for stills the big preoccupation is to inject life into the shots by moving around, twisting your body, looking in odd directions, closing your eyes to rest them, changing expression. It's fun, satisfying but quite exhausting - for those on both sides of the lens.
An interesting week, but I wouldn't want to do it for a living!