Throwback Thursday - Don Blair and Friends

 A big thanks to a good buddy, Jim Morton, for finding this print when doing some office clean up recently.  It was in the early nineties, and I know I wrote a little about it once before, but it's got a great back story.

Don Blair, Terry Deglau (then at Kodak) and Tony Corbell and I were like the Musketeers for years. We did a lot of different projects together. This one was a two-part program that started with a night shoot the day before. The next day every attendee received this 8x10 from the previous night's shoot. Remember, this was in the film days.  Getting a print like this, just hours after people went to sleep, just wasn't done.

That year WPPI was in the Garden Arena, and this was the old entrance to the MGM. I remember there were some serious challenges getting the Hasselblad booth set up because WPPI didn't get access to the hall until they cleared things out from a Tyson fight the night before.

Don started talking about the key ingredients to the shot, and I came barreling down the aisle screaming what crap it was to give people an 8x10 when a 5x7 would do just as well! As people looked at me like the fool I was being, Jim Morton and crew had helped me bring in a 5x7 folio - 5 feet by 7 feet!

Art Leather had built us what had to have been a thousand-pound folio in black leather built on 2x4's just like a wall in your home. It was on hinges and opened to free stand just like small folio would. Kodak had printed the image to 5x7, and it was in the folio. It was the best way to make one simple point - nothing beat Hasselblad sharpness and combined with the quality of Kodak PRN 100, the image was stunning!

I know I told the story once before on a blog somewhere, but for Jim to find the original hand-out from the program just made it that much more fun to share again.

The purpose of Throwback Thursday is to get you thinking about your stories from the past. Start looking through those boxes and drawers and with any luck you'll find some buried treasure just like Jim did!

Note: And, if you want to share it here on the SCU site, if it's got relevance to the group, feel free to send me an email and talk about running it here. My email is [email protected].