April 2025_Pink Moon
**A Movie in Marathon**
For the last 6 to 8 weeks they have been making a movie in and around Marathon. I met and had dinner with Rachel and Adrian, the production director, and immediately fell in love with them. At my age that is rare, but they are magnetic personalities. Adrian gave me complete access to the sets and scenes, and everybody treated me like royalty. I have been on a few movie sets before, but not like this. What is interesting about movie making is right on the edge of every scene you see is a whole crew of people making it happen. It’s fascinating, but also hurry up and wait, as they make the take to their liking.
I also met Julio Decillo, a great actor. He has had prominent roles in a lot of movies, including the Three Burials, a Tommy Lee Jones movie. He told me good stories. I have never met TLJ, our paths just missed each other. He did purchase one of my photo lampshades years ago. Julio was also in the series Narcos and I have been watching it again. Julio is into photography, and he told me that Tommy Lee gave him my book, Big Bend Pictures, and that’s how he knew of me.
**Hello Friends,**
I woke up early this morning, got my coffee, started to listen to NPR, but then opted for George Winston. The early albums, Autumn, Winter into Spring, and December remind me of my old friend Pat Van Geem. I lived with Pat when I first moved to Austin to work for Tomas’ Pantin', one of the best commercial photographers, at that time.
Another one of my best friends, and brother from a different mother Andrew Eccles, assisted Annie Liebovitz for three years. I met Andrew, and Pat, in Corpus Christi, where I lived for four years.
Annie was photographing Henry Cisneros in San Antonio, and Andrew hired me to be second assistant.
Watching Annie literally changed my life. It was a whole new approach to photography and I got it.
Ken Burns, in the series Jazz, talks about when Charles L. Black Jr. saw Louis Armstrong play he knew he had witnessed genius. He went on to become a noted Civil Rights attorney, who taught constitutional law at Columbia and then Yale for nearly 50 years. In 1954, he helped Thurgood Marshall draft the brief for the Supreme Court case known as Brown vs. Board of Education.
That’s what Annie did for me.
Andrew saved me.
Never underestimate the power of genius.
When I got home from that, I purchased a book called American Showcase. It's a book of portfolios of photographers you might hire in any town in the US. There were about four photographers that I thought I would like to work with, and could live where they were. Tomas’ was one of them, and the only one that responded.
It happened fast. I mailed the letter on Wednesday, and Tomas called me the next day. On Monday, I was at his studio. A week later, I was moving to Austin.
The one question I remember from the interview was “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I responded “Eugene Smith.” Maybe that influenced me getting hired, but I was serious.
Tomas taught me how to print, and I loved watching him work. Not only his set building and lighting, but how he dealt with clients and art directors. Tomas was brilliant.
I loved watching his hands do things, and he was such a good teacher. I so wish I had that ability.
It was boot camp for photography. Tomas really had to break my spirit and hardheadedness, and that took nearly a full year.
I was his darkroom film developer and printer. In the beginning, when making a print for him, I would first get the exposure and contrast right. Then he would instruct me to dodge this, I would do that and show him the print, then he would say dodge this too, and I would show him again. He would walk me through every step like that. He didn’t care about how many steps there were or how much paper I consumed. When I got the print to his liking, he would say, now make six prints, and make love to it. Still, to this day, when I am printing, I make six. He was very patient with me.
He was trying to make me Eugene Smith, and I eventually didn’t need him to tell me what to do.
Sometimes people come into your life, for better or worse. You get it, and go through that door or miss the opportunity.
And, I am still a strong believer in Bill Wittliff’s motto of “What you are looking for is looking for you.”
When I was about 20 and struggling to become a photographer another piece of advice I got from a drag racer Paul Withers, is that the system takes care of itself, and this too has proven true for me. I always had enough money to pay the bills, even when I didn’t have very much income or money in the bank.
Maybe, if you believe in something, then it exists for you.
**Millennials?/ After Thoughts**
There is a respect that comes with age. Of course, my mother taught me manners too. But I feel it, if not for me, for the work I have accomplished, and It feels good. Respect, is something most of the millennial generation seems to have missed out on. I am really trying, but I don’t get them. Am I just an old fart I ask myself? I think I am still mostly with it.
As I was trying to learn my craft, anybody that could teach me anything, I was a slave to. Every photographer I assisted, I anticipated their next move, or what they needed. I used to count the frames they shot, so I had the next film back ready for them. Sometimes I was too ebullient on a shoot, and had to be reeled in.
Taking and Making photographs always makes me happy.
Still.
My best assistant Mike Howard once asked me “do you think you’ve taken your best shot.” At the time he asked I thought maybe not yet, but now I can definitely say yes, I have. There is this great interview of Bob Dylan by Ed Bradley of 60 minutes, where Dylan confesses he didn’t know where those early songs came from, and recited some words of "It’s Alright, Ma." He said he couldn’t write like that anymore. "I did it once, but I can’t do it now.” He hasn’t stopped writing, just not like that. I feel that way about my photographs. For 25 years I was on fire. I’m still making good photographs, just not like that.