Throwback Thursday 2004 - Still My Favorite Portrait!

"Those we love don't walk away, they walk beside us every day.
Unseen, unheard, but always near. Still loved, still missed."
Saskia

Intro by Skip Cohen
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The fun of Throwback Thursday is often as much about what you find on the "hunt" as it is the photographs you want to share.  And, today's Throwback is a memory-maker for many of us and a history lesson for those of you relatively new to the profession.

Don Blair was one of the finest portrait artists in the industry, and I've written a lot about him over the years. Best known as a leading educator in classic portraiture, it was his passion for the craft combined with his love for each of us that made him legendary.

I used to say he was the older brother I never had. Our "adventures" redefined the meaning of the word awesome and friendship. The first book I wrote was with Don. Together with two other partners in crime, Terry Deglau, and Tony Corbell, we created a classic "how-to" book and a long list of memory-making moments, not to mention a week of non-stop laughs! 

Looking through a box in my garage last week, I came across a disc loaded with old images. On the disc was this piece I wrote for Rangefinder Magazine after "Big Daddy" passed away. It was the first article I ever had published in a magazine, and I remember the pride I felt at the time. It wasn't about being published but about the honor of speaking for so many of us in a eulogy for my best buddy!

And, to my point in my article below - he may have physically left us, but without question, his spirit lives on in the work of so many artists whose lives he touched!

Within minutes of the announcement on September 26 that Don Blair had passed away, there was an eerie silence in every studio that stretched from Utah around the globe. It was simply inconceivable that he was no longer with us,

"Big Daddy" was the recipient of virtually every award and honor in professional photography. Over the last 64 years his presence in photography has been as consistent as the daily window light he used so often in his portraiture. It's hard to imagine he's gone but here's the beauty of what he achieved - maybe he hasn't left us at all...

There are hundreds of thousands of photographs created every year all over the world using the lighting and posing techniques Don Blair taught and often had created. If immortality and success can be defined as the the number of lives a person has touched, Don Blair has plenty of both.

He never compromised on quality and never quit a single project he ever started no matter how impossible it might have been.   

He was an ambassador ​for much more than just photography. He was an ambassador for life with an unmatched passion for the human spirit and friendships.

Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote, "I am a part of all that I have met." Every professional photographer who ever attended one of Don's seminars or met him at a convention became as much a part of Big Daddy's life as he did theirs.

The mark of a great portrait lies in the ability of the photographer to catpure the essence of the subject in the lighting, the pose and the expression. Nobody could have captured Big Daddy better than in this image created by two of his closest friends, Louise and Joseph Simone, just two years ago.

If you're real quiet and just stare into this image you can almost hear him thanking you for being a part of his life and the profession he loved so much.

As he often said to all of us, "Hey, I love ya man!"

Skip Cohen

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