The Picture Down The Hall Part Two

The photo of the Beauty Shop ladies is one of my favourite days behind the camera. The writer and performer Faye Lane asked me to accompany her to Texas to do some photos of her for a show she was writing about her youth, spent growing up in her mama's Beauty Shop. We spent a pleasant afternoon with her family and with the ladies her mama did hair for, all of Faye's childhood; the ladies who became the kind of family that people have down south -- the kind of family to be found in the works of playwrights like Beth Henley and Robert Harling. The man wearing my very own turtleneck came to me, a bartender, having been told by numerous friends that he should model. We spent a few hours photographing him around my home, capturing various looks for his (inexpensive!) portfolio (I specialized in creating portfolios for people who couldn't afford them). He told me later that this is the photo that got him his agent. For this picture I styled his outfit and his hair -- only to discover later that what I used on his hair wasn't hair gel but shaving gel. I had grabbed the wrong thing off the bathroom shelf.

I did a lot of headshots in my time. Here are two of my favourites -- one indoor, one outdoor; one famous person, one not yet famous person; one younger than me, one older than me; one boy, one girl. I just really love these photos because I feel like they truly captured the essence of Mike and of Miss Ann Reinking.

One of my happiest gigs was shooting the recording sessions for the Papermill Playhouse production of Stephen Sondheim's FOLLIES. The cd was released and called FOLLIES: THE COMPLETE RECORDING. None of my photos appear in the cd because the producer of the cd refused to pay me my asking price, preferring, instead to offer me an insulting amount of money after I had worked for three days. I was learning, in those days, how to stand up for myself; to that end, I took my toys and went home. That is to say, no money, no pictures. So it wasn't a totally happy experience.

But I wouldn't give it back for anything.

Just look at the photo of Ann Miller recording I'm Still Here (it's at the top of the page, ya'all).