Plymouth Photo Studio

In1986 I had just finished more than a few years working construction, it was a welcomed break to be photographing architecture rather then working on it. One of the many benefits of having experience in construction was knowing a lot of the workers and companies that were rebuilding Rochester. A good friend from RIT days, Mark Kaelber, was a mason for our mutual friend, Bill Farmer. Bill had Mark working on the scaffolding surrounding the Powers building, and seeing a good opportunity to get some close ups of one of my favorite buildings, Mark and I climbed all over the building one warm summer evenings. It was quite a treat to be that up close and personal with one of Rochester's iconic buildings. One of the neat features of the Powers building, was that an Architect had built a rooftop apartment. I wish I could remember his name, he got to walk through that great building and had one of the ultimate views of Rochester from the top of the four corners.

Right before I closed on the Photo Studio, my illustrious brother, Ed, (his then wife Pam Roberts, and Tobey, + many others) produced the Citizen Sumits, hosted by Phil Donahue, on the USA side, and Valimir Posner on the Russian side. The first program was done at King 5 in Seattle, the second a few years later at a Boston channel. Both programs were syndicated on all the Channels that Phil Donahue's show appeared on. My brother was doing a bunch of documentary style shows, that were on 20/20, 60 minutes and a few ABC specials. They had done a show on the emerging relationships between Russia and the USA , and saw where 200 USA scientist and 200 Russian Scientist used the existing satellite technology and held a conference while the feed existed between the two countries. Ed thought more could be done with this and picked up the phone and called Phil Donahue and pitched his idea, Phil said, find me a Russian me, and lets do it! Ed was able to hook up with Vladimir Posner and things took off from there. The first program from Seattle came off with little hitches and was well received and got some good ratings. The next program had a twist, it was Women to Women, with the entire audience of only women. There was to be a third, from San Francisco to Moscow, where I was intended to fly to Russia, but alas it did not come to pass. These programs were truly ahead of their time, 1985, to the 1990's were a great time for the de escalation of the Cold War, and much progress was made, between our two countries, what seems to be a new standard, is we are going backwards, with tensions increasing, with our support for Ukraine, against obvious Russian aggresion, and the pro Russian facist segment of our congress and senate taking us not towards an understanding of good will with Russia, but instead subjegates us to Putin's ideal of a future world with him at the head. With all that my Brother and people like him achieved back then, to have it all negated makes for a heavy heart.

As I started to settle into the Photo Studio, I slowly upgraded my lighting equipment, starting with a old Mertz or it might have been a Honeywell plug in strobe with a mini soft box. Next I built a silk soft frame, that I used a few times, most notably the Butterfly lighting on the Eastman student, (the second shot in the groupings) finally Broncolor came through and offered an overhead lighting package with Broncolor mono strobes on scissor arms so that all the lighting was effectively off the floor, hanging overhead with a really nice balance to it, so you could put the lights right where you wanted them. This was particularly nice in my basicly 10 foot wide studio, where space was at a premium. Although I had experimented with umbrellas, I became a soft box affictionalto and used them religiously for the next thirty plus years. The fun shots were musicians, and TV people, they were use to being in front of a camera, and usually came in with an idea of what they were looking for in a headshot. Carven Eison, (the fellow with the leather cap and coat) came in and wanted a photo for entering a PBS director of the year award, he showed up in a nappy Mr. Rogers type look and we got a shot that was ok. Thinking I was done, the next day Carven arrived in a quite different look, remarking "that other shot just isn't me" we proceeded to do the classic face on with some harder side lighting. I think the shot we picked was the first take, and it was always a favorite of mine. Most of the shots I did in black and white were 4x5, I then got a Mamiya flex with a cool 180mm F1.8 lens, and eventually a Hassalblad. 2 1/4 was a lot of fun, and most people wanted to get something in 12 takes, and it wasn't very often that I shot more that four 4x5's or one roll of 2 1/4. I loved to shot Kodak Plus-X and usually shot one F stop overexpoused and pushed the development for a bit more Gama, even with these more thicker negs, I rarely printed anything with more than a #2 filter in B/W paper. This was the "Art' of photography, with a bit of technical expertise thrown in, I loved doing it, even with all the chemistry and time it took. I always compared it to baking a cake, it takes some time, attention to detail, some good materials and a bit of talent.

After RIT, I moved to Boston and worked for a few commercial photographers, mostly Steve Schmitt. Steve was a good guy and a good photographer, whose assistants were always on notice, as Steve had a habit of throwing his photo gear to them! Besides photography, Steve was constructing a condo on Beacon Street and when he realized that I could do construction work, most of my time ended up renovating his condo. Boston could be a fun city, people were people, and it being a big city, you could find friends, but I was much happier when my soon to be wife joined me. After about a year and a half in Boston, with our first child on the way, we decided to go to Pittsburgh, as the cost of living there was a quarter of Boston, and we would be surrounded by my family. Over the next couple of years, I worked for quite a few of Commercial photographers, David Fleischman, and Mark LeBlou being two noteworthy ones. It was great experience, with a lot more of photography being done, along with a reasonable amount of construction work, building studios, cyclorama's, curved walls for Studio backdrops, and lots of set construction. A really fun build, was creating a photo studio for Philip Pelusi, the Hair Stylist, who loved to take photos of his creations. He had a Hair Studio in the Bank building off of Fifth Avenue right downtown ( I think it was called City Center) and at the top of the building, up a narrow flight of stairs were two nice sized 20 x 20 rooms, with a skylight, where I built him a small cyclorama. Philip and I always had a gas together, he was a really nice guy, always looking to help in any way, and he contributed a lot to us being able to stay in Pittsburgh for that time in a comfortable manner. One of the bigger walls was plastered, with large stress cracks. Philip being in a hurry to get things going with his studio, suggested to "just patch the biggest one" Good at following directions, I proceeded to do just that. Walking up the stairs the next morning, believing that I was going to move onto the next task, we both learned an interesting and important axiom, you might get rid of the biggest crack in the wall, but the next biggest one becomes your next gigantic crack/problem. Philip looked at the wall, shrugged his shoulders and remarked " I guess we have to fix them all"