Too Famous For My Own Good

I started having problems when I first started posting on the Photo.Net forums four or five years ago. People thought that I was making up the stories I told, thought that I was full of B.S. really, but then I started posting photographs and yes I had met President Clinton and photographed Janis Joplin, etc. Also, I started to meet people in person that I'd f irst met on the forums when they visited Miami. One of them was Marc Williams, a Chicago advertising photographer who also shoots high end weddings. He shot the photo of me on the T-shirt on one of his trips to Miami as we sat at a sidewalk cafe in South Beach enjoying our morning coffee. Another photographer, James Mitchell, from the Washington, D.C. area had the idea of printing up some T-shirts and Marc did the layout, picked the type face, and Photoshopped the Leicas a bit bigger than they were in the original shot. They also vouched for the fact that yes, my tales were true!

The young lady in this photo, Melisa McKolay, saw my Janis Joplin picture and just had to have a signed print. She also got a T-shirt from James. She posted it on Photo.net, as did a bunch of other photographers wearing their T-shirts. That was the beginning of the end for me on P-net. The inner circle, Brad, Jeff, etc. accused me of starting a cult. I was soon banned from the Leica Forum and in short order from ALL of the Photo.net forums. I haven't heard from Melisa in a few years now, on a rare occasion I hear from Marc, but James and I get together a few times a year, whenever he's in Miami on business. I'm publishing this blog and posting on the Rangefinder Forum. Starting a cult sounds like it might be fun though!