Photographers — Streetshots

I learned photography over a four-year period in the late 1970s by writing and photographing magazine stories on many of the best photographers in Northern California. The lessons came fast and unexpectedly. Doug Menuez taught me how to light on location, underscored when I traveled with him to the town of Likely, in the northeast corner of California, where I watched George Steinmetz using a battery-powered Lumadyne strobe system to make portraits of the “Rainbow People” frolicking nude in a spring. Fred Lyon told me “you can’t make a living by doing important work” — which is why I have shot so many commercial assignments — even as I composed a portrait in the style of Arnold Newman of Lyon in his studio dreaming of his Napa valley vineyard. Ernie Braun taught e how to look at water, and the world beneath our feat, and to get up early and stay out late. Matthew Naythons taught me how to pitch stories, which is how I got my first foreign assignment — seeking out and executing portraits of all the opposition candidates for president in Haiti’s first election following the fall of Baby Doc Duvallier. During that assignment I met and worked with Les Stone, Ron Haviv, and P. F. Bentley. When I photographed Henry Holmes Smith, the legendary University of Indian photography professor famous for making photographs without a camera, he sang (to the tune “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”) “When Richard comes to photograph, hurrah, hurrah, when Richard comes to photograph, Hurrah, Hurrah . . .” Below: Ken Light; John Collier. Jr. ; Carole Duvalliers; Chris Callis; Judy Dater: Paul Fusco; R.H. Powell; Michael Abramsom; Jack Fulton . . .

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