Bill Eppridge in a Class By Himself

In my career I have been blessed with a few fortunate lucky right place, right time relationships. The first and foremost was attending the University of Missouri school of Journalism Workshop.  It really doesn’t get better than that. The second would be assisting W. Eugene Smith who taught me more about communications then anyone. Actually, he taught me more about many things but for the purpose of this we won’t go there. When asked to deliver a keynote speech at the NPPA, one of the people I thanked was Bill Eppridge. I would love to tell you that I know Bill well but as the truth be known, that’s just is not so. But here’s what I do know. Bill Eppridge has very few peers. He stands alone with his great talent.  He also has another quality that generally photographers don’t have. He’s an extremely humble about what he’s accomplished over the last few decades and he’s still a viable force to be dealt with. Bill invited me to his retrospective at the Fairfield Museum. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. This past Sunday I had a little time off and decided to go to Fairfield, Connecticut to see the show.  I thought I knew exactly what I was going to see. Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea the depth and scope of his work. Like many other photographers, we know about the positive RFK Photos, but the retrospective truly showed what an amazingly great talent he is. This is one of the few times I wish I was a great writer because there aren’t enough adjectives to express what an important body of work he has. Photographer Alfred Eisenstadt, once told me, he had maybe only a dozen fine photographs.  When I had the audacity to tell him, “no you have thousands of great photographs,” he smiled, clicked his heels and said, “one day you will understand.”

Thanks Bill for continuing to teach me the importance and power of a great still image.

Adorama Inaugural Street Fair

My dear friend Monica Cipnic asked me if I would come and do a few programs for the Adorama Inaugural Street Fair. My answer was, "Of course!" She put me in contact with Brian Green, who is Vice President of Marketing. Two phone calls, one email, and we were ready to go. To say the program was successful is really an understatement. They had over 9,000 attendees and it was a great cross-section of photographers, beginners to well-seasoned pros. And the bottom line is: It was a lot of fun. I managed to squeeze in 3 separate programs, and from the response on Facebook, that was pretty successful. (Notice how I'm throwing around all those high-tech, modern things like "Facebook"? You didn't think I knew what that was, did you? If it's good enough for Lady Gaga and President Obama, who am I to say it's not cool?) Hopefully, this will be just the first of many. Thank the powers that be for the opportunity.

Joe DiMaggio

10 Greatest Indy 500 Moments

DiMaggio's photo selected as one of the 10 Greatest Indianapolis 500 Moments. His photo was selected number three. With a little bit of practice, maybe number one!

Watch FX Drama Lights Out January 11 10 PM

Photos ©Joe DiMaggio - Lights Out Photography and filmmaking are unlike any other means of communication, where sworn competitors can come together and work on one project and have an amazingly great time.  I guess it takes 4-5 decades to truly understand the camaraderie between your peer group. I spent quite a bit of time at the studio with my dear friend Johnny Eye, (John Iacono) who you may remember was named photographer of the year at the Lucie awards for Lifetime achievement in Sports.  Someone asked me, how do I feel about that?  I said I'm ecstatic for him; if anyone deserves it, Johnny does in spades!  He deserves 3 lifetime awards.  Being good is one thing but being great over 40 years is pretty hard to do.  Tune into LIGHTS OUT  and see if you recognize any of the Extras. Each one of us played a very difficult part - photographers ringside at a heavyweight championship fight.  Wow what a stretch!  It was a lot of fun!

Goodbye Old Friend

Photo © Joe DiMaggio 

Well I guess it's time to take my Beret off for the last time for an old friend Kodachrome Film.  Yes, it's true that I've not shot a roll of Kodachrome in 10 years but in the beginning, I was not only weaned on Tri-X but Kodachrome I and II.  When it came to color film, my film of choice for over 30 years was Kodachrome 25. I will never forget the look on the Director of Photography, for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, John Dominis' face when I turned in 100 rolls of Kodachrome. At the time, I had finished up an assignment photographing the Wittington Brothers, who coincidentally inherited 900 million dollars and won LeMains in their class.  It was a feature piece I was working on and I did not have a drop dead deadline so I chose to shoot with Kodachrome. Another fond remembrance, was Max at the old, old B and H  I had a standing order with Max of 100 rolls of Kodachrome 25, 100 rolls of Kodachrome 64, 50 rolls of Velvia 50, and 50 rolls of Fuji 100.  There would be a line 2 deep at B and H at their 4 cash registers at the time.  Max would see me come into the store and yell, "Sorry I kept you so long waiting, Mr. DiMaggio, your order is ready" and everybody on line got very unhappy as I moved to the front of the line.  I really liked Max. 

Both JoAnne and I certainly don't have an exact count of our photo archives, but we have to have over 1 million, two hundred thousand photos.  We probably will still be making scans from Kodachrome for many years to come.    I guess I had this roll still lying around because it was a 20 exposure roll and not 36 frames

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

The interesting thing about having two photographers in the family is people ask, do we compete? What a silly question. Oops, I forgot, there are no silly questions. Of course we compete. We're constantly competing, and we all know who is going to win. In the final analysis, and it certainly won't be me. JoAnne is not only a great photographer, but she has a very small ego.

Photo Long Beach Grand Prix © JoAnne Kalish

I'll tell you a little story. On the inaugural Formula One auto race in Long Beach, California

there were approximately 1500 photographers, each one of them looking for the best position for the start of the race to get the definitive Formula One start shot. Photographers like Neil Leifer who is considered one of the finest sports photographers in our time. Neil has a zillion SPORTS ILLUSTRATED covers. Along with Neil, there was Gary Nicherman, Louis Franck, Kevin Fitzgerald, Mike Phillips, myself, and a small, 101 pound JoAnne Kalish. Everybody marked their positions and waited for the cars to let loose with a burst of 36 exposures. There was a loud noise and the screeching of brakes and smoke all over the place. I followed a car moving to my left along with, I don't know how many other photographers. At the end JoAnne said "Wow, did you see that?" and I said yes, and everybody else said yes. Late that evening we went to pick up our film at the lab and while there, everybody checked their film out on the light boxes provided. JoAnne opens up her first box of slides, and there is the entire motor series of the shunt at the start of the race, with James Hunt's car literally on one wheel flipping up in the air, which, by the way, Mario Andretti ran double truck in his coffee table book. JoAnne said, "did you guys get this?" We're all looking around wondering what she's talking about and sure enough, she has the whole motor series of this shunt. We didn't get it, we never even saw it. But she nailed it! That's JoAnne, small ego, great talent. That was the first photo she had published in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and they ran it again in SI's YEAR IN PICTURES.

There wasn't another photographer at the race that captured the shots she got!