Letting Go to Receive
Sometimes you have to trust the wind will take you where you need to be.
That’s Joe’s son, Steve, in the photo. I’m guessing he was nine or ten at the time, which puts the date somewhere in the early 90s. The image was originally made for stock usage, a segment of the photography industry that was booming in those days for many advertising shooters. Many of Joe’s peers stopped doing assignments all together and went fulltime into stock photography.
Unlike today when you can download photos for free or very little money, the stock industry of the 80s and 90s was a veritable gold mine for a photographer with a solid portfolio of images suitable for use in advertising or publishing. This was before digital photography, and quality images shot on film were considered items of great value that had be purchased, often with strict (limited) usage defined.
So you might think it would be a no-brainer for a guy like Joe who’d been shooting professionally for more t…