| |  This is Dan Sprague
Dan is one of my best
friends. He has
been quitely instrumental in helping the careers of a lot of Southern
California photographers. A former Art Leather rep, he was the
guy who discovered me early in my first year of wedding
photography. Art Leather noticed that I had purchased their whole
stock of 40 insert album covers in my first summer (a monstrosity of an
album, and rarely sold until then) and they wanted to know how I was
selling such fat books. Honestly then, my work was completely
awful, but I used my little "Storybook" presentation technique to show
couples how cool photos would look in sequence. Dan came out to
talk to me in June of my first year, and he put me on a speaking tour
for Art Leather. I remember him "wincing" a little when he saw my
work, but was encouraging to me. This was back in
1984. I was so bad
at photography that people would believe in my presentation technique
even more, saying, "wow if he can sell his work like that, imagine what
I could do for mine!" How bad was my stuff? OK imagine a
double exposure of a couple sitting in the shade of a tree, and the
same couple looking at "themselves" peek-a-booing around the corner of
the tree.
I got to spend a lot of time on the road with the different Art Leather
sales reps, and those road trips were so much fun. We
literally
would hop in a van and drive or fly all throughout the country.
I've spent a lot of time on the road with Dan, and he is just an
awesome guy. He's also an awesome dad and grandparent . His
son David was also an awesome guy. Dan and David were best
friends,
always talking on the phone or golfing together. Tragically,
David lost his life in a freeway accident, and I honestly didn't know
how Dan was going to pull through that one, but he is just doing great,
representing White Glove albums and playing a lot of golf.
I'm so lucky that I met Dan. He was also close friends
with Rocky Gunn, and I first met Dan at Rocky's memorial
service. Dan is committed to the success of us young
people, and he and his partner Tom Miller helped me so much in the very
earliest of my career, being patient, kind and helpful. |
| | Posted 12/24/2004 7:00 PM - 250 views - 2 comments
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