The "heat" amounted to the thought that my portraits weren't "Professional" as they were done outdoors. That was silly in my mind...it was a matter of viewpoint and as far as I was concerned, that was the end of the conversation. The issue at hand that they didn't see coming was the wind of change. The next year I did 11 seniors, the next 150, then the photographers that had been in town for years started folding i.e. retiring.

The new business I was looking for came in the area of "Commercial work" or Annual Report Photography, Product Photography, and Editorial work. My first big break came from Joplin Printing in Joplin Missouri. Teledyne Neosho needed a brochure showing their capabilities within the Jet engine rebuild areas. All of the images had to be shot in 4 x 5 transparencies and there were about 30 images in all, most of which were in the factory itself. I toured the facility with the plant President and the artist in charge of the design of the brochure. He told us what he wanted in terms of items shot and the artist and I discussed the pictorial viewpoint I would use. There were several considerations to take into account especially when shooting on location. The light source had to be compensated for, the time to shoot each shot would take in actual shooting time as the "line had to be shut down for the shot to be made. The lighting and set up could be done in regular time but the line couldn't be moving in the photographs. To stop the production cost thousands so I had to minimize the actual down time. Changing the 4 x 5 sheets of transparency film on location, "setting" each location scouring it to rid it of objectionable items such as trash, logos on clothes, tools out of place, etc. The shoot was a rounding success and the Brochure was fabulous. I had done an image of a number of machined engine gears that seemed to be floating in space that took an award from The Professional Photographers of Missouri/Commercial Division. This success led to years of assignments from Teledyne Neosho and started me off on a commercial career.