Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.
I’d like to dedicate this blog to the photographer I worked for in the early 80’s. I learned a lot from him. Some technical stuff, mostly what to do and what not to do in life. It was a great experience. I worked for him for about 2 years, but you know, if I was gonna do the whole learning photography thing over again, I’d go to school to learn the technical stuff for 2 years and then assist someone for 3 to 4 years.
Going back to the early 80’s, I was an assistant to this well known photographer in NYC. We were always on the road. It was a non-stop party. One trip in particular was to Acapulco, Mexico. Now, here’s where I go back to what I said in the last blog about the present. The whole thing about the drug lord I mentioned is not true, but the high class escorts, IS true, and the skinny dipping IS true. I’ll explain.
Now, I’m going back to the trip to Acapulco. When we first got there we all went out to dinner to a well known restaurant. We struck up a conversation with the table next to us. It was an elderly gentleman who was impeccably dressed and two younger women who were impeccably dressed. Well, after a few more tequilas, he invited us back to his house to check it out as a location and have a few drinks. We were up for it. The guy seemed cool. He said he was a “banker.” Well, we went to his house. There was an obscure, nondescript door in a wall with a buzzer and security camera. It looked very ordinary. We were buzzed in and it was amazing. The landscaping was incredible and there was a marble staircase leading down to the house. Well, we went down the stairs and all of a sudden there was this amazing huge swimming pool. It was alternating cobalt blue tiles and gold tiles. Of course there were roman like columns at the end of the pool with flames coming out the top. I thought banker, yeah, my ass, right. Anyway, we went down to the pool and to the right there was an indoor outdoor sitting area, you know like a lanai. That’s where we hung out and had drinks for a while. Well, after a few more tequilas, we decided it was a good idea to get naked and jump in the pool. It was a surreal moment. Here I was, overlooking Acapulco bay, naked in a weird pool in Mexico. Now check this out - the two girls who were with the older guy, they were high class escorts from Dallas, and they decided to put on their 80’s style swim suits which were high cut and didn’t leave much to the imagination. They also decided to put on their high heals, and they carried trays of champagne and tequila and various other adult items. I felt like I was on the movie set for the movie Caligula. The only thing that was missing was black doberman pinchers with diamond collars. I felt like I was in a photograph that Helmut Newton would do. (That dates me.)
The whole reason we were in Mexico was to shoot a beauty story for a well known fashion magazine. You’d know the name if I told you. This was back when magazines had a lot of money. I think we had 5 days to do 4 full page pictures. Crazy. Anyway, I didn’t see much of Acapulco. We stayed around the pool for most of the trip. We did end up using the house for the location for most of the time. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, one of the models came out of nowhere naked running down the stairs out of her mind on tequila. She slipped and fell on some pebbles around the pool and landed on her knees. Her knees were trashed. Well, we covered her up with towels. She was bleeding pretty bad from her knees. The rest is a whole other story, but we ended up going home, back to the hotel. Needless to say, all the pictures done with that model were headshots.
I would tell my neurologist stories like this to explain my lifestyle, and he would just shake his head. My parents were mortified.
Talk to you next week. Love, B Nice