This Could Be The Start Of Something Big!

I love July! Every July I have to think about paying my business insurance premium for the year. My insurance renews in July because I opened my photography business in July, and that’s no coincidence because I shot my first professional job in July and I needed insurance to be able to do it. Every business needs to have insurance coverage, and I needed it in spades because my first job was a series of ads for the International Gold Corporation and there would be lots of gold (very valuable gold) that I was going to be responsible for... I needed to be insured.

Being that I didn’t want my first gig to also be my last gig it needed to be absolutely perfect, so I hired one of my best friends at the time, Keith Megay, to work as my First Assistant. First Assistant is your right hand man, it’s a rank, like First Lieutenant, I had two other assistants on the shoot. Good thing I hired him too, because we knew each other pretty well and he saved my butt that day.

Listen, I knew what I was doing, I didn’t need tech help or anything like that, but picture it..... there I was in front of the Plaza Hotel. I’ve got two beautiful models wearing thousands of dollars worth of gold jewelry on top of high-fashion clothing that contained gold as well (see that jacket, it’s 24k gold!!), I had a fashion stylist, a hair stylist, a make-up artist, the client’s people and I was surrounded by at least two hundred spectators, maybe more. That’s why there were three assistants, two were simply there to maintain security. If I said I wasn’t just slightly nervous I’d be telling a big story.

Anyway, there I was, in the middle of all this and everyone was finally ready to go to work. I stepped up to the camera and froze. I was lost, out of it, completely discombobulated. I couldn’t even speak. That’s why I needed Keith.

Realizing my mental state at the moment he coolly walked up behind me, leaned into my back and whispered in my ear, “What would Klaus say?”

I had apprenticed with Klaus Lucka who, in the 1980s was the undisputed master of high-end high-style rich-looking lifestyle imagery. Keith said what he said, I said what Klaus would say and that kick-started the shoot. I don’t even remember what I said that Klaus would say, but it did the trick. I was myself again and in control (maybe Keith remembers, I don’t know)... and I was in business as a photographer, no looking back.

I love July!