The Story Behind…

“Tim, Todd & Arlen”

Photographed in Houston, texas, may 1994

AT&T Photography

Watch Out World, Here We Come!

In May, two months after our sensational Spring Break Trip to Houston in 1994, Arlen called Tim and I with some fantastic news: he and his girlfriend Dawn were expecting a baby son, he had proposed to her, she said yes, he wanted Tim to be his best man in the wedding and he wanted me to be his wedding photographer!
So, in May Tim and I were on another road trip back to see our best friend. Tim and I never run out of topics to talk about, and on this trip, we were talking about our future. He had just graduated from UNK and was working at the Kearney Hub newspaper. He was dating (or engaged?) to DeAnna. She and her roommate Dierdre had gone on the Spring Break road trip to Texas with us, although the two of them continued to South Padre Island while Tim and I stayed in Houston with Arlen.
I didn’t graduate. While I had taken enough classes by this point between ASU and UNK for a person to graduate, I had not passed enough of them to graduate. There was constant friction between my parents and me about my academic progress and this topic in general.
As a matter of fact, I had had enough of college, and was planning a fantastical adventure in the fall to explore Europe with my camera and a backpack. This was also causing a lot of friction between me and my Dad.
However, safe in our car, road tripping through Kansas and Oklahoma on a 14-hour drive from Nebraska to Texas, music blaring, we were just a couple of kids having the time of our life, ready to have another week of fun with Arlen!
This photo was very typical of a lot of the photography we were doing then. It was black and white film I processed myself, and probably loaded with my bulk-loader. I made the print in the darkroom.
We would have put our cameras on tripods and used the self-timer mode. This could have been taken with Arlen’s camera because he has a camera strap around his neck that is missing a camera. This is a clue to me that it could have been on the tripod taking this photo. Tim is wearing our roommate Kyle’s shirt, a practice that happened frequently in the Dome. I know this because Kyle as a lifeguard at Harmon Park Pool and a member of the Kearney Park and Recreation Aquatic staff, and Tim definitely was not! I am wearing a hat from Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, where my sister Tracy was attending, doing my best to look as cool as possible.
I can see catchlights in our eyes, which is a clue that we were using fill-flash* on the camera. Even though this is what today’s generation lovingly calls a selfie, we were deliberate in our posing, putting the sun behind us. Even though we were bulk loading film, it was still expensive and still had a finite supply. Each time a photo was taken or created, it was done deliberately.
So we had the camera on a tripod, using a fill flash, we were posed correctly, and we may have even have had a remote control so that we didn’t have to push the shutter button and run into place in the 10 seconds – I am just remembering now as I write this that my Canon EOS Elan came with a remote control shutter control that I used all the time, and I might have used that for this picture.
Arlen was giving us a lot of pressure about moving down to Houston to join him and start a photography business. Among other things, there was a lot more people which to us equaled more opportunity for our business to flourish. There might be more people in Houston than in the whole state of Nebraska.
He already had a name for our venture: AT&T Photography. Arlen, Tim and Todd. It did not matter that there was a global telecommunications business with the same name. We were confident that any cease-and-desist lawsuit from them would only enhance our fledgling business. We heard someone say any publicity would be good publicity.
We were young, confident, optimistic. Arlen was getting married and starting a family. Tim was dating and had visions of getting married and starting a family. And I was taking pictures of everything I could, including the most special moments in peoples’ lives, their weddings. After this week, I would begin advertising myself as an inter-state freelance photographer, doing assignments and weddings across America. In three months, I would upgrade to an international freelance photographer. I was planning on heading to Houston when I returned from Europe.
We all believed that within a year, AT&T Photography would be crushing it in Houston, and we would be having the times of our lives. Dreams were being made and plans were being set. We were going to conquer the world, and it was a glorious season for us!

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