
My schedule for Friday was an hour and a half at the gym, a post office run, a trip to the florist, and then to the garden center.When I went back home for a shower and a third cup of coffee, much to my surprise I found the CEO of Dynalite, Peter Poremba having coffee with my partner JoAnne. Peter was in the neighborhood, so he thought he would surprise us and show us a few new exciting photographic tools. Peter is not only a great businessman, but also a design engineer, an avid photo educator, and a forward thinking “out-of-the- box” entrepreneur. He has a beautiful wife Connie and lovely daughter Olivia. Peter has come up with a new Dynalite power pack with a 650 watt modeling light, specifically designed for film making. After his demonstration I had an opportunity to use it and to be brutal and to the point, it could replace an Arri light which is about two and a half times the cost. Peter’s new system is a lite, dynamic multi-purpose package incorporating the new Rhyme light modifiers. Damn impressive! The first photo is of a Marine and was done with 2 Dynalites, a soft box, and a reflector.
As a photographer, one of the first things you learn is eye-hand coordination. Your ability to look at 300 people, 7 people, front-lit, back-lit, and see the photo that you want to make. And before you can even think about it, you’ve made 3 or 4, each one a variation of a theme, not just a motor sequence. Making back lit adjustments on the fly, always thing about where the next photograph is going to come. That’s the good news. The bad news can be all of those things that work against you. And you miss the obvious. It’s happened to me before, and I’m pretty sure it’ll happen to me again. You never want to have blinders on. You want to be open to new lighting, new composition, new stories, and new direction. Invariably, you will grow and your work will improve accordingly. While looking at this very beautiful young lady and preparing to do a very shallow, depth of field simple photograph, I look down and to my right and saw one eye and one sideburn and a little bit of a mustache. I said “Oh my god, could that be Melchior DiGiacomo?” I took the photograph, looked down, I tapped him on the shoulder, and he said “Joe D., just a minute”. I guess it’s like two chubby italians meeting in the daylight, or is that two ships in the night? I can never get it right. The funny thing about it is I haven’t seen Melchoir in 30 years. And my god, nothing’s changed! It’s good that there is some consistency in this universe.