Back Story

   Block Island was the first real landscape location I fell in love with, even to this day !  There is quite an intersting back story to my most famous image… 

Summer House, Block Island 1985

Meridian 4×5 Camera Tri – X film, 90mm Schneider Super Angulon lens

   I made this photograph on a clear winter day on picturesque Block Island, a tiny island off the southern New England coast.   Barely 3 ½ years into my Black and White photography career I was quickly moving away from the spontaneous shooting of roll film photography towards a passion for a more contemplative approach with larger 4×5 sheet film. My decision was clearly influenced by the popularity of Ansel Adam’s imagery of the grand Western Landscape. Later on I would become more aligned with Edward Weston’s vision and methods and likely continue in that mindset today.

   Block Island is dotted with unique architecture; so much so many structures actually carry a name.  Summer House, as I titled it is appropriately named “Bit of Heaven” and sits on the southeastern side of the Island where the cliffs are highest and likely drop 120 feet down to short rocky beaches and the Atlantic Ocean.   I quickly knew this grand structure needed to be in the most powerful quadrant of the composition and with a deep sky as a backdrop it seemed I had arrived in the right light. However, standing on flat ground looking at the house the electrical wires and light pole became distracting to me and my only recourse was to back up and fortunately downhill as the short “front yard” would drop off towards the ocean. This vantage point would allow me to almost loose the wires and diminish their significance in the composition. Fortunately I owned a super wide 90mm lens, which allowed me to keep the parallels straight and not have any convergence of the verticals and to shoot objects at an angle which would show a third dimension, these were things I was just learning in commercial photography and years later I am pleased that I made those corrections.   To be honest I didn’t at the time realize the lower vantage point would also project the house as a grand structure from a higher vantage point, at that point in time I had no knowledge of the name “Bit of Heaven” however it all seems to project that theme. Looking back over 35 years this photograph is one of my more important images and most likely was instrumental in the prestigious Robert Klein Gallery in Boston representing my work for much of the ‘90’s

   Again, this was early in my career and I knew a Polarizing Filter would darken blue sky but I did not yet realize it does so predicated on the direction of the light source relative to the axis of the camera lens, in this case one side of the sky is darker than the other and has to be corrected during the printing process so all tonalities are balanced and don’t distract from the beauty of the house as the clear focal point of the image. As an FYI, the digital image you see here is actually of the finished print as correcting the tonal differences in the sky in Photoshop is not accurate enough for my tastes.

   Possibly the most interesting part of this story didn’t happened until several years later in 1987. At that point in time I was heavily involved with the Connecticut Professional Photographers Association and would attend monthly meetings and annual conventions. During these meetings, attended at the time almost entirely by working photographers who were earning their living from photography, the underlying theme of most meetings was succeeding in business and promotion of one’s skillset.   So, still green behind the ears I set out to find the name of the Ad agency that handled the promotion and advertising of my favorite Silver Gelatin enlarging paper, Agfa Portriga Rapid. Research told me told me the agency was in Fort Lee, New Jersey.   I wrote them a letter and basically told them my images were so good that they shouldn’t do another ad campaign until they saw my work. Low and behold an art director contacted me to bring my portfolio down for them to view. The art director and president of the agency fell in love with Summer House and quickly offered me to be part of their Signature Series of artists.   Naturally I was excited to be chosen, they told me to get a “commercial release” for the image to be used in publication and they would begin mockups on their end. What’s a commercial release I thought ??

   As it turns out, I had to contact the owner of the property and ask for written permission for the “likeness” of their house to be published in ad copy in periodic magazines.   I researched who owned the house and contacted them with a well-crafted letter asking their permission for my photograph be used for advertising purposes.   They abruptly declined asking that I respect their privacy !! Naturally, I was disappointed !!   I regrouped and made the owners an original signed and matted print, wrote another letter explaining these magazine periodicals targeted a niche market and there would be no filming crews on their property, they just wanted to use my image with no identifying locations or otherwise means to learn the location of the house.  Again, they declined…but did thank me for the Print !!   I later learned that the actual owner of the home was a retired judge, and whose daughter now taking care of the property, she the sitting Attorney General of Rhode Island !!

   I had to tell the ad agency I could not get a release to use my image in an upcoming ad campaign, my shot at fame quickly swept away in a dash I thought. Fortunately, for me the art director remembered another image of mine from Block Island and asked to use that one, an image I was not crazy about but nevertheless it would put my name in print and how could I complain. The image they used is attached here as seen in what is called a “tear sheet” of how the ad was to run in various photography magazines.

   The lasting irony came some years later when I was giving a workshop with my mentor Jack Holowitz right on Block Island. A high school student got wind of our Photography Workshop going on and asked to sit in and learn. We agreed and during one of the print viewing sessions I told the aforementioned story about “Bit of Heaven” to which the student found hard to believe. He told me there are post cards of Bit of Heaven in gift stores all over the Island; I suggested he must be mistaken given my past experience with the land owners !! I would soon learn there was in fact color postcards of Bit of Heaven and a sunset and on the back of the postcard the actual name of the home “Bit of Heaven”

   The final punctuation to the story exposing my lack of understanding how the fast paced advertising world worked, Agfa was pleased with the response my Light House image received and wanted do another campaign using my name and another image they already had in mind. They forwarded a likeness of one of my abstract images they wanted to highlight in the next ad campaign and asked if I would allow them to turn the image 90 degrees making it a horizontal as it fit better with their ad copy.   I declined siting artistic license…I never heard from them again !!

   I was however smart enough to take my payment in the form of approximately a 5 year supply in Agfa product, all Portriga Rapid and as many Silver printers have come to learn not long after 1987 Agfa was forced to change the emulsion of Portriga due to environmental hazards and the paper was never the same again !