For my first job I was a professional photog in Hollywood

`PORTRAIT photographer: No experience necessary," began a classified ad in the Los Angeles Times that summer. I was 16 and loved taking pictures. By 8 a.m. the next day I was standing in the fake-walnut panelled offices of a small discount portrait studio in Hollywood, listening to a middle-age guy who smoked too many cigarettes explain the subtleties of cut-rate portraiture. "Put little babies on a blanket and prop their heads up," Chuck said. "Put toddlers on a stool or on Mom's knee. Women have two things they want in a picture: Tits and jewelry. Be sure and show them both."

Here's how it worked. Looping through the endless, suburban housing tracts of Los Angeles and Orange counties, sales crews would go door to door, hawking yellow certificates good for one color, 8-inch-by-10-inch portrait of you and your child for only $4.95. The salesman pocketed the whole $4.95 - the company made its money later - and set up photo appointments 20 minutes apart. That meant the next day, I had 20 minutes to find each house, get in the door, set up background and lights and bang off six shots of Johnny or Janey before packing up and starting over again.

Some of the other companies - all the photographers worked interchangeably for half a dozen outfits - scheduled their shoots every 15 minutes. You learned to move quick, and you hoped you worked behind a sales crew that booked sittings in some kind of reasonable order. I got $1.50 a picture and paid for my own gas. On a good day I could pocket $40, starting first thing in the morning with tiny infants and toddlers, working into schoolchildren in the late afternoon, and finally, at day's end, whole family groups, including the dog, cat and grandma. On the side, I got some free film and processing and full-time use of a beat up Rolleiflex fitted for 35mm film.

Chuck told me about the nightgowned women, but I didn't believe him. Sure enough, once in a while the door would be opened by a woman wearing something weird and diaphanous and not a baby anywhere in sight. Chuck carried his own camera and made separate appointments for such shots. I just stammered and clicked away. I rarely saw the pictures later and never heard from clients again. The company made all its money from "proof passers" - the super salesmen who would call later with my slides, and try to jack the customer up from the coupon 8-by-10 to some kind of godawful, textured, fake-canvas, 30-inch-by-40-inch enlargement.

By August, I'd gotten good enough that they asked me if I wanted to go to San Diego. "One seventy-five a shot to start," they said. "And we'll boost you to two dollars in a month." I stayed in a $2-a-night waterfront flophouse in a room so small I had to open the window to avoid kicking out the glass during the night. I ate at 7-Eleven. I was making money like crazy, or so it seemed.

My pro photography career crunched to a halt two weeks later. I was driving from one 15-minute appointment to the next and checking an address on a slip of paper in my hand when I looked up to see I'd run a stop sign. The gray-haired woman whose Chrysler had the right of way stared aghast at me as I rammed her back fender, sending her car into a slow-motion spin into a ditch. "I'm all right, young man," she said shakily. "Just sit here a minute and hold my hand." I did, and apologized over and over.

My car was finished for the summer, and so was my first summer job.

July 23, 2001