Enviromental portrait • click to embiggenDuring my commercial picture making life, in addition to making Norman Rockwell-like tableau people pictures, I also made lots of environmental portraits (people in their environments, both work and personal activity wise).

One of the more interesting and enjoyable such assignments was an annual report for Gould Pumps, a manufacturer of industrial pumps for mining, gas & oil, and power generation industries. At the time of the assignment, the company was aggressively acquiring quite a number of smaller pump manufacturing companies. Consequently, a large number of new employees were added under its corporate umbrella.

As a result, the decision was made to feature in that year's annual report some of their employees with interesting or unusual outside of work activities. The featured employees were spread out across the US of A in a variety of interesting locations which ranged from the middle of nowhere on the Texas panhandle (outside of Lubbock) where I pictured the 2nd runner-up in the Tarantella Chili Cook-off, to an "iffy" inner-city neighborhood in Newark, NJ where I pictured a community service volunteer.

Obviously, meeting interesting people and visiting interesting locations was what made this assignment ... well ... interesting and quite enjoyable. However, the was another aspect which added considerably to the interesting and enjoyable thing - my traveling companion (in addition to my assistant) was a former newspaper reporter / local tv news anchor turned freelance copywriter (some Rochester, NY readers may recognize the name, Ron Robitaille) who was an expert at living-large expense account travel.

Everywhere we went, Ron's first question, upon greeting our assigned Gould Pump representative at each location, was always the same - "Where can we sample the best local/regional food and drink". Getting that info was always the first order of business. Once obtained, it was then on to the other business of making pictures or, in his case, doing interviews with my subject.

Needless to say, the food and drink we had on that 2 week trip was incredible - BBQ chicken and ribs in a Texas roadhouse, the best paella I ever ate in a Portuguese neighbor restaurant in Newark NJ, some delightful haute cuisine in a tony LA restaurant, and local beers galore, to name just a few of the delights we sampled.

All of that said, the thing which has stuck with me the most from that whole experience was my introduction, from Ron Robitaille, to the appreciation and consumption of fine Kentucky bourbon (I already had the fine food thing down pat). Unfortunately, a few years after the annual report assignment, Ron also reminded me of another lesson as result of his too-young-to-die demise - don't over do it (drink and fine [rich] food).

FYI, the picture in this entry is not from the aforementioned annual report assignment. It is from an assignment from a Pittsburgh PA ad agency which featured agency people in their work environments but with props from their outside work activities - pictured in BW before BW was an "effect".