How My Relationship With Commercial Photography Changed, and Why (1990s)

They were heady, heady times. Not much left of that era but the shock waves.

Capturing the essence of the 90s, or something… heh. Bri in Ventura. Photo by Don Giannatti

How I Changed My Career Midstream and Why

I have talked before about my beginnings as a musician who found photography to be a stress reliever when on the road. I may have mentioned how I lied my ass off to get a job as a junior designer, which led to me becoming a full-time (but usually broke AF) fashion photographer in LA.

Although I wouldn’t trade those heady, wild, and inspirational days for anything.

Today I want to tell you about how I discovered that I had to diversify to win at this game.

It’s 1985 and I am on the road a lot. Back in Phoenix after a disaster in LA, I am shooting my ass off.

Shooting in New York, a partner in a studio in Chicago, and a little shop here in Phoenix. Heady days.

And long nights on Jet Blue red-eye flights with full aisles to myself. They would only lightly board the plane due to carrying lots of heavy stuff in the cargo bays. Carryon only.

Knapsack with shirts, jeans, socks, and a camera bag full of Nikons.

Good to go.

In NYC, I was staying at a photographer’s apartment that I knew. I had designed a book for him (US Swimming, Heintz Kluetmeier) and he was generous enough to insist I stay there when I was in town.

That was a lifesaver, for sure.

I would usually have at least two weeks full of assignments and tests. Tests paid $200 then (Elite, Wilhelmina) and they liked me so I would generally make a couple of grand while building my book for regular clients in Chicago.

Even though I lived in Phoenix, most of my fashion was done in the windy city.

Fashion… heh.

Catalog work, OTR crap, and some trade ads mostly, but hey - models and stylists and MUAs and editors, so yeah, Imma gonna call it fashion. Sue me.

During this time, I was learning how to design because some of my clients liked the way I had created presentations of their work. Today we would call it a “look-book” they would call it an in-house catalog.

(I had also done a lot of ‘design’ for my band, and a few others in the previous decade, so I knew myself around a lot of this stuff. Rubber cement, typeset, T-Squares, and a sweet old drafting table that cost me a fortune.)

I would spend a week in Chicago, a week in New York, and two weeks in Phoenix every month for nearly three years.

I had the apartment in NYC, and in Chicago, we lived in the studio. It was a three-story old home on the edge of the places no one ever goes in Chicago. We were low-key, blacked out all the windows on the lower floors, and kept mace with our baseball bats handy near the doors.

I lived cheap and flew redeyes on every flight.

But I was building a book and a reputation and I knew, just KNEW, that I was going to be in Vogue at some point. Soon.

And then, we had a baby.

1986.

And just like that, the idea of spending two weeks away was not something I wanted to do anymore.

(I have always contended that people have to decide what they want out of life and do that. Sometimes we end up sacrificing one thing for another. I have never regretted that choice.)

So I moved all my stuff back to Phoenix and began shooting more commercial and less ‘fashion’ which was easy since there was no fashion in AZ. None, nada, zip.

And that is when things changed in my relationship with photography.