Dick Smolinski Photography

As a kid, I’d hang around the art department at the advertising agency where my dad was creative director. Often getting under foot, I was assigned small graphic projects to keep me busy… waxing type galleys, shooting stats and setting headlines on the typositor. Once I was sent out with the staff photographer as an assistant (I carried the tripod) to shoot an ad for Bic in New Haven, nine years later… At the ripe age of nineteen, I decided commercial photography would be the career I’d pursue. While checking out photo school for the first time, I was greeted by a – you might say – cordial hippie – beard, ponytail, tie-dyed t-shirt – it was all there. He was behind an old wooden 8 x 10 view camera working on a tabletop set of three Spalding golf clubs. I was invited to take a look and what I saw was awe-inspiring, a nine iron, wooden driver and a putter. The heads intertwined, posing for the cover of the Spring catalog. I knew at that point I had found my calling – and it wasn’t golf. I forgot to mention, the hippie, same guy that nine years earlier took me out on location to shoot for Bic, who’d a thunk it?