My husband and I have been partners in marriage and in business for over 35 years. We have collected a lot of memories together over those years and because we are both photographers and filmmakers, we have recorded many of those moments.
Gail Mooney with James Michener. Chesapeake Bay, MD
I’ve been sifting through our analog archive of photographic prints and “chromes” lately in the process of purging other “stuff” in my life, that I no longer need. It is amazing how much stuff one can accumulate over the years. We have never been “consumers” in the typical sense. I’m almost embarrassed to say that we don’t even have a flat screen TV in our home – we do in our office, which is part of our home – but not in our living area. But we have somehow accumulated lots of folk art from a lifetime of travels, lots of photographic gear and hundreds of thousands of images.
As I continue to look through a lifetime of images, I occasionally pull a couple of photos out of the archive and share them on Facebook on “throw back Thursday”. What stands out to me in looking through a lifetime of photographs is that my husband and I have had an incredible journey together. I don’t think either one of us could have begun to imagine some of the experiences we have shared, when we first started out – I know I didn’t.
I’ll share one image and story with you. Tom and I had an assignment for Travel & Leisure to shoot a story on the Chesapeake and we had arranged to photograph Michener for the article. The day of the shoot, I brought my dog-eared paperback copy of Michener’s “Caravans”, that he had written in 1951. I had carried that paperback in my backpack for a year when I circled the globe the first time. I was told by some that I shouldn’t hand a paperback to Michener to sign – but I did anyway. He was touched, because he knew how important the book had been to me on my journey.
I remind myself daily to enjoy each day that I am given and to never underestimate what may be around the next corner. Expect the unexpected.
My mom used to tell me, “You don’t want to buy the nicest house on the block.” She didn’t just say it when I was buying real estate, but used it as an analogy when she was dispensing other words of wisdom. Maybe that’s why I grew up not wanting to be the “smartest person in room.”
When I was very young, I used to create characters that I wanted to hang out with. One was my imaginary friend Peteso who was a “newspaper boy” in China, doing dare devil stunts on his bicycle as he delivered his papers. There were plenty of others, each one bringing something exciting to my more mundane life of a typical 5 year old child.
By the time I got out of college, I had traveled the world, building all sorts of relationships with people from many different cultures who had broadened my mind as to how I saw the world and myself. I gravitated toward people who were NOT like me.
When I first began my career as a photographer, I had the great fortune of having an incredible art director, Adrian Taylor as my mentor. Adrian had a colorful career as an art director for magazines like Holiday (the original) and Travel & Leisure, which is how I connected with him. Adrian took my partner Tom and I under his wing when we were first starting out. He encouraged us by believing in us and he made me always want to put everything I had into an assignment and improve with each one.
We learned a lot from Adrian, but perhaps one of his greatest gifts was to include us in lunches, dinners and parties with some of the best photographers of that time – Arnold Newman, Slim Aarons, Pete Turner, Al Satterwhite, John Lewis Stage, Fred Maroon and countless others. Being in the room or literally “at the table” with these legends and listening to their stories and advice was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. What I learned from these photographers is the kind of stuff you don’t learn at a photography school. And it wasn’t necessarily things like business tips or photographic technique. They talked about their passion and their ideas and it awakened me to the possibilities within myself.
I’ve been preparing a presentation that I’ll be doing for ASMP at the NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) next week. As much as I’m grateful to be able to share my knowledge at this prestigious conference, I have to remind myself that it’s only possible because I’ve lived my life, putting myself in situations and environments where there are people who are much smarter than me. In fact, for me the best part of NAB is to sit in on some of the panel discussions with the movers and shakers of the industry and listen to what they’re talking about.
These days, when I fantasize, I no longer create make believe characters to hang out with. Instead I imagine myself at a table, having a discussion with people who intrigue me on some level and expand my mind to a place it hasn’t gone before. And then I set out to make my fantasy come true.
I’ve often talked about how important collaboration is in video. And with the right mix of people collaborating – wonderful things can happen.
My longest collaboration has been with my husband and business partner, Tom Kelly.
June 4, 1977
Today marks our 35th wedding anniversary, but our relationship goes back even further – another 4 years. It’s truly hard for me to believe that so many years have gone by, but that’s what happens when one is busy living life.
The way Tom tells the story of the day we met is that we were with our classmates (our first class of Brooks Institute) on a field trip, and we ended up at a roadside hangout in the mountains just outside Santa Barbara, California. We were on a patio drinking beer – I was barely of legal age – and Tom spotted me – “this exotic chick with rings on all of her fingers and smoking Turkish Ovals (cigarettes)”. I didn’t have rings on all my fingers and I stopped smoking long ago, but the real reason I stood out back then was that I was 1 of only 6 women who attended Brooks at that time.
For me, going to Brooks Institute in the mid ‘70’s, was like mixing “oil and water”. I had just come back from a yearlong “hippie-backpacking” odyssey around the world. I was the ultimate free spirit and I was thrown into a rigid educational environment with ex GI’s from the Vietnam War. But, I met Tom and that’s when our collaboration began. I knew nothing about photography, other than managing to get lucky with some images that I took with my Nikon FTN and 50 mm lens, on my travels. Tom had processed reconnaissance film in the Air Force and had a dark room as a kid, so I looked to him for advice. That’s how we started and we quickly became a couple – being there for one another.
After graduating from Brooks, we moved back East and worked a year in NYC as assistants to two commercial studio photographers. (I had gone to high school in NJ and Tom grew up just over the state line in Pennsylvania) We also moonlighted, shooting jobs our bosses didn’t want to do and also shooting for ourselves on the weekends. One summer we took our bikes and cameras “down the shore” and shot a wonderful personal project on the boardwalk – some of those images shot during that summer, remain favorites of mine. Perhaps that’s when the lines between business and personal became blurred.
We were extremely lucky in our early years to have an amazing mentor, Adrian Taylor, who was art director of Travel & Leisure at the time. Adrian gave us many precious gifts as young photographers just starting out. The most important gift was his encouragement and his unwavering belief in us. Every time Adrian gave us an assignment, we wanted to raise the bar and Adrian’s eyebrows as well. Each assignment for the magazine was more challenging and ambitious, shooting major city stories with celebrity subjects, and luxurious environments in fabulous destinations. And the best part – we got to experience this together!
As much as we’ve had an extraordinary career, working together and independently, we’ve also had a wonderful marriage and family – our best collaboration – our daughter Erin. Tom and I are so completely opposite of one another, but somehow it has worked. Tom is more comfortable being out of the limelight and pointing it at me. What’s amazing is that Tom not only manages to produce his own jobs but he also takes care of a lot of things around the house. There is a whole secret world in our basement, that I know nothing about. I’m the dreamer with the crazy notion to think anything is possible and Tom has always been there for me, supporting my latest scheme and adventure. He has been the wind beneath my wings. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been times, when both of us have wanted to walk away – but we didn’t. In our “throw away society” I suppose that’s rare. I think it’s a pity that people give up too quickly – you never know what’s just around the corner.
Like any good story though, a life well lived comes with conflict and contrast. Sometimes that has to happen to get you to the “next place”. I’m grateful to be celebrating a life well lived with Tom, my husband, my partner, my soul mate.
Journeys of a Hybrid 