Sunday, March 29, 2020

Planning Pictures

The pandemic has done away with the possibility of my commenting on new restaurants, old pubs, or any of the many fine Liverpool museums. They're all closed. Most everything here is closed. Liverpool is a ghost town, as are all the major cities in the UK and everywhere. Should I now consider myself lucky to have lost my home in New York City, where the coronavirus is out of control? Lucky today maybe. But this crisis shifts and changes every day. Today's New York could be tomorrow's Liverpool. 

So this week, I will continue to talk about photography. But instead of finding pictures (Street for Stock), let's move to the business of planned picture taking. 

Over the past six decades, I've been involved with many very different types of photography—theater, travel marketing, journalism, fashion, glamour, portraiture, as well as the food and street stock that I still do. I also worked as a photographer on film sets in Rome. Some of these things I think I was good at. Others not so much. 


The Fab Four walking away when I asked them a question about the virus.

I was never comfortable doing hard-core photojournalism. I managed, but just. My time as a PJ is way behind me now, and I plan to keep it there. Even doing light news doesn't work for me now. As a senior in retirement, I need to shoot on my own schedule. With news, events control the schedule.

Portraiture, I think, is what I did best. I began doing photography in the theater in New York, and I made a comfortable living doing portraits for actors those first few years. Several big talent agencies would send their clients to me. Changing circumstances have taken portraiture away. 

Perhaps next week I will talk at length about doing portraits. A good portrait is light years away from those soulless snapshots where people give the camera a bright, false smile.  



The famous Cavern Club shut down because of the virus.

Shooting travel for airlines (that's travel marketing) was where I've had the most success. Most photographers lust after exotic travel, and yes it is as glamourous as it seems. But there's a dark side. It can be very lonely, and I often went on trips that lasted three months. Travel is great. Too much of it is not so great. 



Remember when spring was a time for families to go outside together?

Fashion? Top magazine editorial fashion photography is a complex, snob-filled world that's hard to get into. My charm failed me with that. I couldn't make a dent. 

Glamour is portraiture with less clothing. 




Winter is over now, but what about the winter of our discontent?


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