While I plan on cultivating this as a nice surprise in the story itself, here I'm just gonna drop the curtain and let you gaze. The guy on the left here is Justin Cox, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq War. He suffered a closed-head injury, came home to California, and now finds himself in the solar business. A business, not coincidentally, that is booming across the Golden State.
My path to meeting Justin involves an interview I did in Oakland this week with Danny Kennedy, the founder of Sungevity. We're working on a story about Proposition 23, a ballot proposal that would effectively rescind a bunch of California's clean-energy regulations. Well, exhibiting true Australian hospitality, Danny invited us for beers following our shoot, hence the plastic keg cups in the picture below (that's Danny on the right, with me and Clean Skies' photojournalist Ian McAllister). Eventually, he tells me Justin's story. I resolve then and there to do turn our shooting schedule upside-down in order to get Justin on camera.
This is a look at our location for the shoot, a rooftop in Riverside, CA where Justin was busy managing a team of residential-solar installers from PPG (who, BTW, are pretty good guys too). I felt a bit guilty distracting Justin from his job, but his patience and character won the day and we felt most welcome (if ill-equipped for the heart).
So look for a much more visual and, I hope, compelling version of Justin's story during a piece we're completing on Energy Jobs. It's slated to air on Clean Skies Sunday (soon to be Energy Now!)the first weekend of October, which should give me ample time to craft a story structure worthy of my subject (who's also attending Med School in his spare time).
I mentioned the heat, right? Well, but the solar crew's estimate we hit upwards of 120 degrees on the roof that day. And the entire time, just a short but well-aimed leap from the roof, this is what was beckoning to us. Sweet relief...
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