Freelancing and experimentation

The 1980s offered opportunities for expanding creative horizons by doing some commercial work for clients like John Robert Powers Modeling School and Agency, Hertz Rent-A-Car and Control Data; learning about color photography; and venturing into scenic and fine art image-making.



Three Kings:  Hand-colored Black & White image of Siberian tigers, 1988

  


Lake Nokomis, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1985

 

Model portfolio shoot, 1986




Near Telluride, Colorado, 1985

 







Master builder:  Images from the documentation of the construction of a
 photoprocessing facility in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan in 1984.

 



Teen model is a model teen: A grouping of images from an
 assignment for John Robert Powers Modeling School and
 Agency in Minneapolis in 1982 documenting the life of an
 up-and-coming prospect.



J-school and the newspaper days

The epiphany of that January day on the Red River led to studying photojournalism at the University of Minnesota, then only second to the University of Missouri as a producer of newspaper shooters.  While training at the "U" under industry icons like R. Smith (Smitty) Schuneman and National Geographic contributor Jim Brown, I practiced the craft producing sports photos and human interest essays for a local suburban bi-weekly chain, Sun Newspapers.  I enjoyed editorial freedom and learned how to put a page together.  But I earned very little money.

In 1980 I was at a crossroads: move up to daily paper before I graduated; go back to school and get my degree; or do something else that could better pay the rent.  The daily newspaper market was bursting with Woodward and Bernstein era journalism school grads with idealistic and romantic notions of being like "Animal," the staff photographer character on the TV's The Lou Grant Show.  A career as a daily newspaper photographer was never so appealing.  And a sheepskin from the University of Missouri proved to be the ticket to get on with the big papers.

So I chose to stay close the production of images by going to work in the photo-processing industry and worked my way up the corporate ladder in the field eventually running the operations side of a Kodak amateur photofinishing facililty in the Twin Cities before the decade was done.

Here are a few samples of my image-making during the University of Minnesota and Sun Newspapers days:

Mainstreaming: A 1979 essay on a Bloomington, Minnesota
 elementery school program that introduced special education
 students to regular classroom situations for a portion of their
 school day

Frisbee form:  A contestant at the national championship competition
held in Minneapolis in August 1999 shows off his disc-catching skills. 



Winemaking, Minnesota-style:  Vintners Alexis and Nan Bailley pose in front of
 their production facility near Hastings, Minnesota.  Their winery was one of a
 handful in the state's growing industry in the late 1970s. 





Joy of victory and agony of defeat:  The winning team celebrates as a player
 of the losing team of the state championship football game crosses a yard marker
 on his way to teammates to console and be consoled as snow falls on the field
 in November 1978.



A borrowed camera, a roll of Tri-X and a frozen Red River

With tack-sharp clarity, I remember my first encounter with serious photography like it happened just yesterday.  I was a 19-year-old sophomore business major at Moorhead State University in northwest Minnesota.  It was January of 1974 and I borrowed my roommate's 35mm rangefinder camera, had him help me load a roll of black and white film -- probably Kodak Tri-X -- into it, and headed out into the cold, clear winter's afternoon to make some pictures in the Red River Valley.

Whatever prompted me to embark on the adventure that day has now faded with the years but I can still vividly recall walking along the shoreline and on the ice of the frozen river that separates Moorhead on the east from Fargo, North Dakota on the west.  I made my way, boots crunching the snow underfoot, taking pictures of snow drifts and logs sticking out of the ice as the sun sank behind the bluffs in the mid-afternoon as it does on the short winter days there.  But the cold had no effect on my body as the details I saw through the viewfinder together with the whole of the scene consumed me.  Afterwards, I felt anxious with antcipation to see the prints when I had finished the roll of film and brought it to the camera shop to be developed.

I am quite certain those first earnest photographs had little artistic merit.  I don't know what became of those images, but I do know that after that day on the snow and the ice, in the sunshine and shadows, my life would never be the same.