dale

I met Dale about two thirds through our 12 year career as photographers.

His father had been a very capable photographer in Lockport, New York. Dale was the child of the father’s old age, and he died while Dale was still very young.

Besides being an aspirating photographer, Dale was a competent “process photographer”. That maybe an obsolete job and title! The offset printing process included a lot of very technical, not very creative photography and darkroom work. Dale mastered that skill early. It provided him a job.

He moved from NY to our small town to work for the local printing company. The company was very aggressive, did very fine work and was a much larger company than you would expect to find in a small town.

We had met before, and when he arrived we became close friends (we still are almost 40 years later). Dale would come down to my studio, borrow my models, my studio, my cameras and produce absolutely brilliant photographs. I was doing pretty decent work by that time and we were very friendly rivals.

He had been there less than two years when I got a call to interview for a job as a staff photographer for a good sized company in another town. Before I went to the interview I stopped to visit with Dale.

“Dale, whether you like it or not, this interview involves you.” I went on to say that if I took the job I had a studio for sale, and if I did not take the job I would recommend him. I did not take the job (working for a large company like that scared me, and I really did not want to move to a city).

Dale took the job, stayed until the company went bust, went to work for Hyster as a photographer and ended as the staff photographer for Freightliner truck company. He is now retired and still does wonderful photographs, mostly of cars and trucks. At Freightliner he did a calendar of truck photographs each year for many years. Great photography, good looking trucks and done with supreme skill. I still have most of them.

When we moved back to Washington State in the early 90’s Dale invited us to the Professional Photographers of Washington convention (where we had won so many awards 20 years earlier). He was the featured speaker in the commercial photography division.

In his talk, he had Miriam and I stand and he told the crowd how he had used my studio, models and cameras, and that so much of what he knew he had learned from me.

A good teacher has students that do better. My students always did better than I could have, though I did not say so! I was never overly skilled as a artist, but my ability to get students to do better than either of us had expected -- I excelled at that. I wanted to be a college teacher.

We spend a wonderful evening with Dale and his wife about once a year. I am so proud of him. He is still photographing and writing about cars. His work appears regularly in all of the street rod and custom car magazines.

Some one once said that good students make good teachers. True.