Late 1980's

Transition from Assistant to Photographer

A book cover created in the darkroom.

I started shopping my portfolios around the various ad agencies, graphic design firms, magazines and book publishers. The corporate location work which I thought would support the more unusual photogram work was elusive. But to my surprise the people who saw the photograms hired me to create book covers, illustrations and corporate collateral. The photograms could illustrate abstract concepts or make boring subjects like computer hardware look interesting. I developed darkroom techniques to layer imagery together mixing large and small things in one picture.  The photograms ended up to be much more in demand than the corporate location work.

The darkroom allowed me to quickly refine an image since I could produce a new variation every 30 minutes or so. The print would come out of the processor and I would study it and make changes and expose another. If the client wanted to provide input they would sit in my loft drinking coffee and making phone calls waiting for the next iteration of our image. I would call them into the darkroom as the print emerged from the processor, we would analyze it and plan how to improve it. The collaboration was exhilarating.