While cinematographers primarily focus on moving images, many are also skilled photographers, getting a lot out of working with stills – and sharing them with “photo buddies”. This includes Steven Poster ASC… 

I’ve known many people whose lives are dedicated to photography. I’ve been fortunate to say that from the time I was 12 years old. But of course I had no idea what that meant or how far that feeling would take me. Yet I remember clearly the day I decided that I wanted to be a cameraman. That’s what the job was called in those days. 

Until that day, I had no idea where I wanted to fall in the spectrum of vocations that guaranteed a life in photography. I knew that there were photographers who shot weddings and Bar Mitzvahs because I saw them at family celebrations doing that work. That was a choice. Then I realised that there were people covering news stories because I saw their work in newspapers and magazines. 

When I was 13 years old, I spent a summer with my aunt and uncle who lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before my trip up north, I bought my first serious camera, a used 1949 Twin Lens Rolleiflex, from my local camera store in Chicago. The owner must have thought I was serious about photography. He insisted that was the camera I was to have. His choice was spot on for me. 

One day that summer I wandered into the Green Bay Press-Gazette darkroom and naïvely asked if I could hang out there – and they let me. What photographer do you know whois asked for help by a 13-year-old with a Rollei around his neck would refuse to help? No one I’ve ever met.  

Most photographers (and especially cinematographers) are eager to share our knowledge. This level of generosity is what makes the BSC and the ASC the kind of clubs that they are. In fact, I might have said in a previous column that I think cinematographers are the only craftspeople in the motion picture industry who actually like each other enough to spend time together. 

Photo buddies 

One of the other things that sets us apart is that I’ve always had what I would call a photo buddy, and I know that many of my colleagues share the same kinds of close friends. These are usually people who share our love for photography and can spend hours with us talking about our craft and our art. 

One of the first photo buddies I had was a kid named Bill. We were probably no older than 14 when we were asked to work at an international trade fair in Chicago, our hometown. Our job was to shoot Polaroids of people sitting in a rickshaw at the fair.  

Shortly after that I met my first professional cameraman, Morry. That day I realised I could combine my love for movies and photography into a real job. I knew then what I wanted my life’s work to be. But Morry knew that I could learn more at that age by studying still photography than if I tried to do anything with cinema. So, with my Rollei around my neck I entered high school. And the principal (headmaster) of the school gave me the nickname “flash” because I would take the school’s 4×5 Speed Graphic with the big side flash attached to the camera and photograph Friday evening (American) football games. Fortunately, that didn’t stick. 

Passion for the craft 

When I finally got my driver’s license at age 16, I got a great summer job shooting family portraits door-to-door in the Chicago suburbs. We had a room full of people phoninghouse-to-house doing cold calls to get the people to have our “professional photographers come to your home and photograph your family. And we will give you a free 8×10 colourportrait of your family.” We would have to shoot at least 20 sittings a day. The beauty of that job was how I learned more about photographing faces than at any other time in my youth as a photographer. And I was working professionally, which gave me a tremendous sense of confidence in my ability to be a photographer and to be able to work with people. Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t very happy when I put over 20,000 miles on her car that summer. 

In my senior year of college, I was fortunate to start shooting commercials, industrial films, documentaries, and I even worked with a man who was credited with inventing the genre called Gore Movies, Herschell Gordon Lewis (look him up on Wikipedia). One of my jobs on that VERY low budget work was to stop off at the butcher shop and pick up some of the leftover cow parts that were used as props for the three full-length movies we made that summer. 

And to this day I still have a photo buddy. His name is Andy Romanoff, former executive vice president at Panavision. Andy also had the opportunity to work with Herschell Gordon Lewis. But he was a couple of years ahead of me. Andy was also responsible for bringing the Louma crane to America. He is everything a photo buddy should be. We talk. We hangout. We do stuff with photography. We are still both as enthusiastic as the day we started taking photos. Andy’s life has also been dedicated to photography, just like mine. Having someone in your life like Andy is always a gift.