There are few revolutions in the way jobs are filled in this country. Employers look for loyalty, energy, enthusiasm, and honesty, those qualities we like in our friends and family. The ideal candidate has all these plus the technical skills necessary for the job: a typing skill of fifty words per minute, communications skills to explain a product to customers, and negotiating skills to resolve employee relations problems. This is unlikely to change in the near future.
This chapter reviews these "how to get a job" guides, and places them within the context of our experience and perspective. First, we'll present the advice of experienced PTs. Note the wide range of qualifications they select.
Qualifications That Can Help You Become a PT
"My master's degree wasn't really related to the type of work I do, but it wasn't inappropriate. It provided me with the training to develop strong written and oral communication skills."
"Ability to get along well with others, friendliness and being a hard worker."
"My advanced degree (MBA, Finance) has been a positive factor in my ability to get good positions. My budget experience has also been a helpful qualification."
Additional Advice: "Don't say you like to travel if you don't. I think you travel more than you were told in the job interview."
"Go for it, but make sure you want to travel. Avoid eating and drinking too much."
"Be flexible, enjoy traveling, enjoy people and places by seeing what you can. Be good to yourself. Get enough rest. Avoid not being prepared."
Let us turn to the books. We urge you to browse through these books and buy only the ones that seem like good, long-term reference books. If the advice sounds fishy to you, it probably is.
Our Rating System
Marketing Yourself: The Catalyst Guide to Successful Resumes and Interviews, by the Catalyst Staff, Bantam (paperback).
This book has two objectives, to show you how to write a resume that lands an interview and how to conduct yourself during an interview. We feel it delivers on both counts, and succeeds for two reasons. First, the techniques described in the book have been tested. They are useful to men and women alike and give this book an edge over other job-hunting manuals. Organized in a way that does not overwhelm the job seeker, it takes the reader through a step-by-step process that can be assimilated gradually. The book is goal-oriented and it keeps its focus on the task at hand. The authors of the book also understand the inner turmoil of someone trying to get a job but not knowing how to go about it effectively.
We appreciated the fact that the reader is constantly reassured. You may change your mind about your targets, but "don't worry about that now," you're told. "Don't be afraid to examine the relevance of your background for positions in areas dominated by men." "Don't attempt to make your resume look good on the first try. If s virtually impossible." In other words, loosen up. Don't be intimidated by the whole project.
The section on preparing a resume is thorough and clear. All the necessary steps leading to the polished resume are explained in detail. Worksheets are provided to help you clarify your thoughts and to identify your major strengths. Sample resumes and revision criteria are included to help you create your most effective resume.
The section on writing the accompanying cover letter is helpful because sample letters are included. Joy disagreed with the book's contention that a good customized cover letter means you only need a single version of your resume, no matter what job you're applying for. However, that may be because she's had many varied jobs and tailors her resume and her cover letter to show a straight-line direction to a specific job, even if it means omitting an employer or emphasizing responsibilities that were not the true focus of a job she held.
Another valuable feature of the book is a record-keeping system to help you keep track of who received your resume, when it was sent, and the follow-up actions you'll want to take! If you are applying to several prospective employers, organization means you will never miss an opportunity to let an employer know of your interest in the job.
As someone who sits on both sides of the interview desk, Joy acknowledged that all resumes look the same after a while. If you believe that there will be many applicants for the job you seek, make a point of highlighting one or two areas on your resume that you believe are essential to performing the job well. Be sure you mention those in your cover letter.
For example, you believe that strong written communications skills are required for a job. On your resume, use a colored marker to circle the phrases describing your stint as a writer for the high-school newspaper, the fifteen-page report you wrote that was used to restructure the agency you served as a volunteer, and any writing and English courses you took in school. The rest of your resume remains untouched. In your cover letter refer to your strong skills in this area and their importance to the job as you understand it. If you mark up your resume with restraint, most hiring managers will react favorably because you've given them a visual clue for separating you from the pack, are confident enough to point to your skills with pride, and are not afraid to market yourself.
The interview section of the book is equally helpful. The state of mind of the inexperienced interviewee is accurately portrayed and addressed. The brief inserts illustrating the plight of the struggling "Margaret Peters" caused Joy anxiety as she read it. The successful resolution of Margaret's interviewing problems is equally believable.
Both of us were especially pleased with the book's three golden rules of interviewing: Be yourself. Know yourself. Sell yourself. Again and again this theme of knowing yourself and your skills is emphasized. Analyze. Prepare. Do your homework and you'll be ready for the questions in an interview. Your answers will be relaxed and knowledgeable. Finding the right balance between the employee's fulfillment and the employer's fulfillment takes place in a successful interview. It can't be done if you don't know yourself.
Many employers, especially fast-growing companies that need new employees, are surprisingly willing to structure jobs around the skills and interests of a particular individual. A good example is Jackie Zehring. She saw a need for a marketing support function and accomplished the job in her unique style. The basic requirements of the job do have to be met, but frequently they can be adapted to the employee's particular strengths.
If the Chinese food syndrome strikes and an hour after reading Marketing Yourself you forget everything in it, keep one insight in mind. Your prospective employers want and need to know the answer to one question: "Why should I hire you?" You, the prospective employee, must know your strong points, interests, and skills-weaknesses, too-and be able to express them so that the best match can be made.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. I give it ***. It's worth the money. I wish everybody I interview would read this book and take it to heart.
The Professional Job Changing System, by Robert Jameson Gerberg, published by Performance Dynamics, (hardback).
The book pleased Lois and puzzled Joy. Lois liked the slickness of the book, and despite its pitches for the author's services felt it offered good advice. Joy found its objectives murky and most of the advice oddly negative.
Our disagreement starts with the book's organization and extends to its content. For Joy the overall organization of the book reflected a lack of a clearly stated intention. For this reason, she at first was tempted to dismiss the actual content as inaccessible to the average reader. For example, the book's early pages include two job-seeking methods that the author does not recommend (a technique called "advice letters" and situation-wanted classified ads). Yet they are both covered in detail, an irritating barrier that the reader must overcome to get to more useful nuggets.
Lois found the book's layout made it easy to go back to find a previous suggestion. For instance, ideas on how to answer hard interview questions are laid out in short paragraphs with bold titles. If you've been fired or you're worried about another sticky matter in the past, it is easy to find help in the book. She believes college students and middle-aged executives who find themselves out of work are the two groups most likely to profit from Mr. Gerberg's book. But whether one relates or not, it is a mistake to overlook his relevant pointers in regard to both approach and attitude in seeking employment.
Joy acknowledges that a relevant pointer is found in the section on "Direct Mail to Employers/' which means writing a letter to the company and person you want to hire you even if you are not aware of any job openings. This has worked, usually for other than entry-level jobs and usually in companies that are actively recruiting in many areas. Another piece of good advice is waiting until just after 5:00 p.m. to call an executive you've been trying to reach. The receptionist is likely to be gone then and the executive may answer the phone personally. Other sections with helpful information cover "SODAR stories" the chapter on salary negotiations, and a brief section on learning the language of industry.
Would I recommend this book to a friend? Absolutely, I even recommended it to my son, who just graduated. –LD
The overall style of the book is turgid and, strangely enough, projects a general distaste toward job seekers. The chapter called "Notes for Women" is condescending. With reservations, I give it **. Read it only at the library.
-JM
Dream Jobs: A Guide To Tomorrow's Top Careers, by Robert W. Bly and Gary Blake, Wiley Press (paperback).
This book looks at nine specific industries to show how generalists can break into them. The nine industries that offer expanded career opportunities are cable television, computers, training and development, biotechnology, consulting, advertising, public relations, travel, and telecommunications.
Information in the book is well organized, and each chapter is devoted to a specific career field. Within the chapters are sections providing a general industry overview, guidelines on how to get into the industry, and brief descriptions of "success" in each field. The industry overviews provide valid information, but there are enough inaccuracies to make me second guess a first, favorable impression of this book.
The chapter entitled "Computers" discusses the field of data processing, a separate pursuit. Computers are used in everything from energy management systems to medical laboratory machines to graphics systems for artists. Had the authors called the chapter "Data Processing," the book's credibility would have been enhanced.
A bio-technician usually has a Ph.D. in science. Even though the authors note this exception to the generalist nature of their intended audience, this topic should have been dropped. If s a book in itself.
In the chapter on cable television, filmmaking experience is equated with videotape experience. Film and videotape are not the same. A media professional called the two, "the same but different." For example, a film producer who hires a videotape editor to edit a film wouldn't expect quality film output because the technical aspects are not the same.
Although the information in the telecommunications overview was good, some addresses of equipment makers were out of date or inappropriate (a small sales office rather than the corporate office or division headquarters).
Would I recommend this book? The strange aberrations from the remainder of the solid-appearing text make me doubt its soundness. I give it **.
-JM
Guerilla Tactics in the Job Market, by Tom Jackson, Bantam (paperback).
Helping you find satisfaction in your chosen work is the aim of this book. In the process you receive clear instructions on how to find yourself and find a job because the author rejects the idea that work is separate from the rest of your life. The average working life of about ten thousand days consumes the prime hours of each day and the prime years of your life. Considering the high cost of earning a living, the author feels settling for any job is tantamount to destruction of self.
So the author urges you to ACT. Don't just sit there, get going! Tom Jackson uses every motivational technique known to get the reader both physically and emotionally involved in the Great Job Hunt and in the greater pursuit of a fulfilling life.
The book addresses employment from the historical, macro-economical, and personal viewpoints. Paradoxically, the very completeness of his approach may almost overwhelm you. Although you might grow impatient with anything but the how-to-get-a-job portions, restrain your impulse to flip through the "irrelevant" sections on self-knowledge, economic ebb and flow, and the nature of jobs throughout industrialized history.
The first part of this book will be taken seriously. Then you might get bogged down. The author knows this and commiserates. He knows that the reading public reads how to books all the time but seldom puts any of that knowledge into practice. He hears the objections and scoffing that go on in your head as you proceed through the tough parts, and writes them into the text. Example: "I'm getting sleepy with all this stuff." As a communications technique, it is disarming. Because he knows that we don't like to feel alone in our quest, he sprinkles in sample cases of hard work. You read the experiences of others as they relate what it was like going through the same traumatic situations you are.
Ignore the totality of this book at your own risk. You can learn what this book has to offer early on, or you will learn it later. If you learn earlier, your success is defined by you, not someone else.
Information in the book is organized into ten chapters. It begins with putting your work life in perspective, moves into discussing the jobs of the future, and covers researching your job market. The book winds up with interviewing techniques that benefit you and the interviewer. The final chapter shows how to follow up the interview to secure the job you want.
Within each chapter are subsections with such titles as, "You-the problem solver," and "The universal hiring rule." (The rule is: "Any employer will hire any applicant so long as he or she is convinced that it will bring more value than it costs.") One of the best things about this book is the interactive technique of spelling out specific tactical actions with a check-off box to mark their completion because it prompts the reader to take an active role in the job-finding process. The seventy-eight tactics are spread throughout and outlined in little boxes. Completing each tactic provides a sense of accomplishment in a regular schedule of mini-successes that may be gratifying in the longer process of getting the job you want.
Tactic #38 is a case in point. To quote, "Start your Information Interviews at the same time as, or before your pitch for job interviews. Select five or six of your employer prospects, or others to whom you had a personal referral, and start scheduling meetings for the purpose of gathering information, expanding your contacts, and planting seeds for future harvesting."
Other aspects of the book include emphasis on constructing your career by acknowledging its game like characteristics; realistic scripts of telephone conversations a job hunter may initiate in searching for information; and chapter-closing references to other publications that go beyond traditional employment books.
Among the principles and concepts and rules emphasized in the book, three thoughts Lois marked as especially worth remembering:
- "I know now that all it takes to find a good job is to stay in touch with what is going on in the world."
- "He made the mistake of thinking that the more general his job target, the more possibilities he would open up. The opposite is true."
- "A major element is the question of choice. If someone makes you do something, it's a chore. The same task created by you for your own purposes is pure play. Turning work into play is as simple as deciding what you want to do, and choosing a job which will allow you to do it."
Would I recommend this book? Yes. Definitely a good effort. It is good if you're looking for your first job or if you're changing careers.
A TALE OF TWO WRITERS- Susan Penner and Nanneffe Dillard Simpson
They both travel. They both write. But that's just about all they have in common ....
Married and without children, Susan Penner is a young woman from Minnesota in her late twenties who travels because her husband in the Coast Guard travels. But even though it is her marriage that takes Susan from place to place, her approach to work could be adopted by any single man or woman who wants to earn a living writing and traveling.
Susan started as editor of her high-school yearbook, and then majored in journalism at the University of Montana. Her first job in Washington, D.C.
‘didn't pan out' but she soon found an extremely satisfying one with a consulting firm. The firm had an eight-month contract from The Atlantic Richfield Foundation to write a handbook on energy conservation methods for colleges and universities. A questionnaire was sent to these institutions throughout the country asking them to submit descriptions of what they were doing to conserve energy. All workable ideas were used in a pamphlet for administrators, who in turn could use this information to convince their boards to try them. The project was set up as a contest, and a panel of educators picked the top twelve working ideas. The schools that submitted the winners each received a $10,000 grant to pursue the methods further.
Some ideas were practical but others highly technical, and Susan and her fellow writers had to research until they understood them in order to put the processes into laymen's terms. "That was the challenge of it," she explains, "and it was a lot of fun. You had a specific deadline, so you couldn't put it off forever, but it was nice not having the daily deadline stress."
She stumbled onto her solution to the "how do I make money when I'm always moving" problem when she and her husband left Washington for Montana. She took her first job as a general assignment reporter for a local newspaper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
"When you start on a paper, you start at the bottom even if you have a degree. I wrote obituaries and other un-fun things. The paper hadn't computerized yet, so I did a lot of proofreading of other people's copy when it was printed out before it was pasted up. I was the 'floater' also. Most of the other reporters had beats, but when they were on vacation, or if they had two things going at once, I would go out and do whatever they couldn't. That was nice because I did a little bit of everything that way. It was a lot of fun.
Working on different newspapers has given Susan a priceless resource for writers: a wide variety of experiences involving a wide variety of people. In her last job in Florida, she worked on The Pensacola Journal and covered the courts. "It was fascinating. I absolutely loved it. (They have a lot of strange types of crime down there!) It was interesting to see how the system works, and you get caught up in a trial. I figured I was spending as many hours involved in the trial as the attorneys were. I'd go to the trial and write the story each day, and then have to see it through two editors and into print before I could go home. It was a long day. It was a thrilling experience, but depressing too. I was so caught up in it, then the trial would end and someone would be convicted of murder, and that was a tragedy.
"Reporting for newspapers in different parts of the country has put me in a wide variety of situations, and has made me very adaptable. It has certainly increased my self-confidence. As a matter of fact, I've been lucky because I'm building quite a portfolio. I'm in between jobs right now- we're about to move to Texas for five months-and I've had time to evaluate some of my work. At times like this I think about pursuing my freelance article ideas. I've collected quite a bit of material from all the places I've been!"
Nannette Dillard Simpson is not married. She was married for almost a quarter of a century, but ten days before her twenty-fifth anniversary, the marriage ended. "My husband went home to his mother" is the way she puts it.
"I had nothing-no skills and no self-confidence. I had never worked. 'You're too old (I was forty-seven at the time) to get a job - my son told me. 'Nobody's going to hire you.' Then he gave me $250, and sent me to binge away from my sorrows shopping. I walked into Neiman-Marcus to buy myself a Givenchy sweater, and walked out with a job!"
The job didn't work out well for Nannette, but her new boss did. He was the supportive person she so desperately needed at that point. "If one more person had put me down, I would have never gotten up. I was selling handbags, and I was probably the worst handbag salesperson Neiman-Marcus ever had. I felt like I had ended with a fate worse than death. When my boss found out about my background he said, 'Nannette, you don't belong here.' "
Nannette's background included a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas, and a published story in a "little bitty antique magazine" (for $25) just before her divorce. Supported by her boss's confidence in her, she wrote a letter to the editor of Texas Monthly Magazine, and asked for work. She received a letter by return mail that said, "Dear Mrs. Simpson: Please call us as soon as possible."
"I was with Texas Monthly Magazine for eight years. I critiqued nightclubs for them, and knew every twenty-five-year-old bartender in Dallas! Finally, though, I decided I was too old for that sort of thing. I'll be sixty next year." Nannette did more than critique nightclubs, though. She also covered museums, art galleries, and sports events. One unforgettable time she wrote in her column, "The Dallas Cowboys are playing the Cleveland Indians." (It appeared in print, but since others had missed catching it, she escaped a reprimand).
Nannette has always been able to scrape enough money together to travel. People are that way about their addictions, and she is addicted. "When I lived in West Texas, I bought a $10 Paris street scene from an antique shop, and I thought that was the extent of the world that I would ever see. But gradually I started going places. I went to Italy first because I had fallen in love with Michael Angelo when I read Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy, and then I went to England. I also took a cruise, but I would never recommend that to anybody. All of these trips I paid for with my own money, but then things changed."
Nannette always seems to reach bottom before things break for her. She had been jilted by a man two days before Christmas, and so she asked her travel agent to get her out of town. "I'm not going to stay in town for Christmas feeling like this," she told her. "Where should I go?"
San Antonio was the answer. It was a fairyland to Nannette, and when she got back, while her enthusiasm was still high, she queried Gourmet Magazine. They were interested in the story. "I worked on it all summer. I put together an account of an entire month's worth of activities in San Antonio (though I'd only been there for forty-eight hours) and they published it. That was my first breakthrough."
She started writing travel stories for the Dallas Morning News, and a few were picked up by the wire services. She didn't get any money for them, but they helped her get into the Society of American Travel Writers. "When I went to Bermuda this spring, Delta Airlines picked up the tab, and Bermuda Tourism paid for my accommodations. That's the way it sometimes works once you get a reputation."
Things are beginning to roll for Nannette. People call her now to request articles. Her home is her office. The nerve center of her large one-bedroom condominium is a nineteenth-century library table that she inherited from distant relatives. "I don't get up until 10:00 or 10:30, so I take the phone off the hook and that way no one bothers me. Sleeping is my favorite thing-I love to sleep. After I get up and have breakfast, I read my newspaper from cover to cover. Then, when I'm finally thinking coherently, I start work." When she's working on a piece, Nannette sets a certain number of pages per day for herself, depending on the deadline, and "just gets them out of the typewriter." She now teaches writing at a local college, and when her students talk about waiting for inspiration, she tells them, "I'd have to quit eating if I waited to be inspired!"
She's recently put together a collection of her more humorous experiences while traveling alone. For instance, one time she was desperate to get to the theater on time, and got in a strange car with a man who offered her a ride. Since it was raining, she thought he was being kind. Not until later did it dawn on her that he thought she was a hooker. Luckily, she was able to correct the impression. ("Don't do what I did," she advises readers.) A book on her roller-coaster life is also in the offing describing how this vivacious lady has learned to survive-with flair!
A PHOTOGRAPHER'S STORY- Michael Fairchild
"When I was a child I never watched television, so ideas were never 'packaged' and presented to me. But there was always music, especially classical music, so rich and diverse that scenes of all sorts would come into my mind as I listened quiet woodland glens, camels moving slowly over dunes, exciting battles. (The history and geography I was learning in school added color to my imaginings.)" Michael now captures real images through the lens of his camera as he photographs historical places, wildlife, and people worldwide. At the end of each trip, he brings his "images" home and joins them, quite naturally, to music. The result is an audiovisual production.
"My basic format is a thirty-minute sight and sound presentation using two projectors, a dissolve unit to blend the pictures into one another, and a sound track. I write a script (read by a professional actor), and then the narrative is mixed with natural sounds and music. The sounds I blend in are such things as the lapping of waves, factory noises, or even crickets, anything I feel is relevant to the environment."
Michael has covered a good part of the globe in search of subject matter, but his early trips were close to home. The National Parks of the United States provided much of the material for one of his first productions, North America Wildlife and Wilderness. This production, showing the major mammals, birds, and reptiles of our country in their native settings, unfolds the layers of the ecological system and points up the great diversity in our natural heritage. Another presentation is called People USA, and the title is self-explanatory: if s a portrayal of greatly diverse Americans going about their daily work or play, caught off guard at revealing moments.
Michael's overseas projects have produced City and Countryside, France, Great Britain: An Affectionate Portrait, and Portugal. Each program balances a brief overview of the country's history-via location shots-with its economic elements, people, festivals, and sights. The Great Britain program, for instance, begins at Stonehenge and winds its way to Piccadilly Circus. There are scenes and episodes from history, but also pictures of scenes today, such as cricket matches. The show on Portugal includes folk dancing, fishing villages, and a Portuguese bullfight. There is also a section on life in the countryside since Portugal is a pastoral, mostly agricultural area.
In the past, Michael has paid for his trips himself, but he no longer has to do this. His latest trip to Brazil was funded jointly by an international airline and a travel wholesaler. (A wholesaler organizes travel groups for individuals as well as corporations, social clubs, etc., and offers advantageous rates through its purchase of fares and accommodations in large quantities.) One of these travel packagers saw Michael's Galapagos production (combining pictures with quotes from Darwin's log on the subject of evolution) at the Vanderbilt Planetarium on Long Island, and approached him on the subject of what they might do for each other. The fact that Michael had successfully completed so many productions by that time was a definite plus in their discussions. Michael agreed to go to Brazil, and the packager agreed to pay the expenses for him and his family.
Things like that don't happen overnight. There had been a similar opportunity for Michael alone-sans family-when he went to Africa to put together his Wonders of Kenya program. He had been in contact with a tour operator in Birmingham, Alabama, sending him prints, notices, and a video tape of the Galapagos production, and finally asked, "Can we work out a trade-off?" "If you pay your air fare, I'll pick up the rest!" was the answer. Suddenly Michael found he could go to Africa for twenty days for under a thousand dollars! (He has said his "thank you" with a nice mention of the man's business in a nationally published article he wrote about the trip.)
As Michael points out, "Photographers who want to go places are a dime a dozen, and a normal reaction to a request for financial help might easily be, I am not going to subsidize this guy's vacation.' But if you believe in something to the point of funding it yourself and completing projects you begin, they're more willing. My advice to someone entering the field would be not to look for big deals right off the bat, but find a way to move on your own. Find out what you're looking for, because by the time you do get a deal, you've got to have a pretty strong idea of your own goals-or you'll just be shooting something for someone else and losing sight of your own objectives.
"When you're young, you can travel for almost nothing. You can stay at bed and breakfasts or youth hostels, or you can camp. I've always traveled on a light budget, which has allowed me to see the countryside and to live simply. Of course, as a photographer my pace is slower than that of a 'rip-roaring' tourist. I take in an area, and I stay with it. You run into problems when you try to see seven cities in six days, just checking off destinations. I like to do one country at a time-the 'saturation approach'-thinking and speaking the language and coming away with a complete impression. That takes time.
"As a family, we've been to the Okefenokee Swamp, all over the Western United States, to Portugal and Brazil; and moving slowly, taking pictures, has proved to be more congenial for our son, Scotty, than a typical sightseer's schedule would have been."
Families traveling with photographers sometimes complain that they spend all their time sitting in the car waiting while the photographer "does his thing." Michael has a different approach. "My photography tends to be concentrated into certain hours of the day, so it's not a constant thing. When the light isn't good, everybody gets a chance to swim or relax, or do whatever they want. But even when conditions are right, they're right there with me helping. I like to relate my work to them. We talk about it. 'This is what I'm looking for,' I'll tell them. 'See how it looks through here.' I like to share photography while I'm doing it, not keep it separate from everyone as my thing.
"We walk a lot when we're out, climbing hills to look down on valleys, that sort of thing. We're always moving, so there's no problem staying fit. We eat lightly at lunch time, too. Instead of a restaurant stop, we'll go to a nice looking market or food shop and get bread and some cheese or fruit. That way we're not locked in to trying to find a place. We can pull off the road somewhere pretty to relax. It's better than beating your way in and out of restaurants.
"Most of the places we stay are in the 'plain but adequate' category. I look for the least expensive place that is acceptable in terms of fundamentals and quiet. We eat both breakfast and dinner at the hotel to avoid too many changes in location. When we travel with Scotty, we usually don't go out at night except for an occasional late evening when we get a babysitter at the hotel. When the day's work is finished, we'll have dinner in the hotel restaurant and opt for simplicity.
"There's a special sense of intimacy or immediacy to friendships you make when you travel. You develop camaraderie with people who are involved in a project with you, and you share a lot of meals and time together. More, in fact, than you do with casual acquaintances at home. Your new friends know more about you, and you know more about them than even your neighbors do. You'll do anything for them, and they'll do anything for you. The ironic part is, however, how hard it is to re-create that same feeling later on under other circumstances.
"In Portugal, all I had to do was tell people in broken Portuguese that I wanted to photograph them in order to show children in the United States about the people of Portugal. In almost every town, the mayor would come out and the people would roll out whatever I needed. They opened their homes. It was wonderful! The Portuguese love children, and they're very kind and tactful. I guess they've worked out all their aggressions a long time ago. There's no pushing or shoving, and I never saw any greed. Every time I photographed a peasant in the field and finished my work, he beckoned to me and took me back to his caravan to offer wine and bread. These people have nothing by our standards, but they're ready to offer you half of whatever they have. If you ever want to restore your faith in the human race, I recommend a trip to Portugal. Susie, my wife, and I both feel that the people of Portugal are the most unusual people we've ever met in terms of kindness.
"Scotty was five when we were in Portugal and his favorite place was an old fishing village. He could sit in the sand and play with Portuguese children, or dig on his own; I could stand a hundred yards from him and photograph
People repairing nets, and Susie could poke around in all the little shops nearby. So everybody had their own little world, and yet we were within sight of each other.
"He really enjoyed the places with mystique, though, such as castles. As we've wandered the battlements of ancient fortresses, Scotty would peek through the turrets and imagine he was shooting arrows down on the invaders. If s exciting to see things through the eyes of children. I wasn't far behind him, though, in thinking the same things. If you follow any kind of battle plans or history, you say to yourself, 'God, men really did swarm up here!' And occasionally you get wonderful guides who act out the battle and show you where the arrows were shot-and both Scotty and I could imagine the men sneaking in and taking the place by surprise.
"I got excited about history in school. I had teachers who really 'lit lights' and made it not a thing of dates and places, but of people. When you read as a child about Richard the Lion-Hearted on the Crusades, or about Nelson being shot on the deck of the Victory, if s almost a mirage. But when you finally stand on the hallowed ground where those people lived and died, you can't help but get a jolt of electricity. The whole thing hits you full face. I like to put myself in actual places like that.
"When I went to Stonehenge, for example, I got there at 4:30 in the morning, and lo and behold, this beautiful orange ball of a sun started to align itself with the stones. The whole area is circled off with barbed wire to prevent vandalism, and you're not supposed to go in until nine or ten in the morning, but there was no power on heaven or earth that could have kept me from hopping the fence to shoot that sight-to put myself right there, in context with the ancients. (I was quietly and pleasantly expelled by the constable, but not before I got twenty shots of the place.) That is not something I would try behind the Iron Curtain, but in a country like Great Britain, they figure you're crazy and send you out. Being civilized, they don't rip the film out of your camera.
"If your shots don't include people in modern dress or cars, there's nothing to prevent the viewer from taking that leap of imagination back in time with you. One time in France, I got tremendously lucky. I was looking for something that would explain the revolution-in a little town in Southern France because, to me, the Place de La Concorde isn't the shot to use when your talking about revolutionary mobs fighting in the street. I liked the town and I was just walking around when I suddenly saw a barricade across the street with tricolors stuck in it. I thought, This is strange!' . . . took a few shots of it and went off to lunch. When I came back later there were soldiers running around and shooting-and I realized they were actually filming the storming of the barricades in the 1840s revolution! It was part of a Franco-British production of Les Miserables, the Victor Hugo story!
"It was there I learned humility about my linguistic talents. I think I understand French very well, and I have a rudimentary understanding of Portuguese, but this time I bombed out. The movie extras were smoking Gauloise cigarettes between sets, and I noticed that inside the Gauloise was hashish! I watched this going on for some time, and then in my best schoolboy French, I said 'Boy oh boy, those Gauloise cigarettes must be very strong!' They just looked at me, utterly blank, and I knew I had not communicated. I called over one of the British fellows who was more conversant in French than I, and I asked him why I'd drawn such a blank. 'What did I say?' 'Well,' he answered, 'you just told them that Welsh women are very strong!' It brought to mind Rex Harrison's remark, 'The French don't care what you say, as long as you pronounce it properly.'
"All in all, I don't feel I've ever had a 'bad' experience in my travels. I've never been robbed, I've never been in an accident, and I've never been disappointed in a place. Some people seem to go places and they're almost automatically disappointed. I go and I usually like it better than I thought I would. It's all how you look at it. As a matter of fact, my only problem with jet lag is because I'm so excited the first few nights I'm in a new place, I can't sleep. I'm overwhelmed by the fact that I'm there. Even an alarming experience that someone would consider 'bad' is 'good' if it makes an interesting story when you get home.
"Like my experience with the Masai warrior in Africa. I'd worked up a deal to photograph him and he'd been given his money. I hopped out of the van/took jthe pictures, and got tack in. Then I looked up. He was running after-me with his spear! He wanted more money. It seems when I took the photograph, there were seven or eight cows in the background and he wanted the same amount of money for each cow's picture as I'd paid for his! There we were-a vanload of terrified people, this warrior looking a little berserk, and we're miles from anywhere. Our guide, to make it more chancy, was not going to take any of this-of British descent, of course. So he was giving it back to the warrior as fast as he could, and I'm thinking, 'My God, what a going to happen?' The Masai even came over to my side of the van and brandished a rock at one point before it was all over. He never did make any headway with the guide. An uneasy time but a great story to bring home.
"Good guides can be helpful in all sorts of situations. Some are sensitive to your needs and some aren't. The bad ones will get you out at high noon in the blasting sunlight for forty-five minutes, instead of earlier when the animals are around, and you'll mill about with a huge group of people that gets larger and larger until the place is littered with Hawaiian T-shirts. You almost expect someone to get on a bullhorn and yell, 'OK! Red Team- move out!'
"I was more fortunate than that on the trip to the Galapagos Islands. We spent two or three days in Ecuador, and twelve on a motorized fishing boat with only ten passengers, including an Ecuadorian cook and a guide. That was perfect. We had a Zodiak raft and the whole group went ashore in one push. With nine people spread out over a big beach, it was possible to have some time to yourself.
"The Brazil project went very smoothly, too. It was different from the others in many respects because it was my first wholly subsidized trip. I had many obligations to my sponsors, but there were many 'perks.' We took eleven flights and stayed in each city four or five days, but at every airport a guide and a driver would grab my bags, throw them in the trunk for me, and off we'd go. Everything was streamlined. I never paid any money for a taxi or a bus. It was all arranged in the background, and I could concentrate on what I had to do. I could tell the driver, 'Look, I need to photograph these four hotels,' and he could get me to them-just whip up in front of the no parking zone, let me out, and I could get it done. Driving my own car with a map in my hand would have made it much more difficult.
"I had every means of conveyance. I went by canopy through the Amazon and I flew in a little helicopter with the doors off over Rio de Janeiro. It gave me every kind of advantage. I chose to specialize with different themes in different areas. In Belo Horizonte I was mostly interested in finding the iron ore quarries and mining sites. In Sao Paulo, I just did heavy industry and skyscrapers. And in Rio I did the classic beautiful scenes of the city, the girls from Ipanema, hang gliders, surfers-that kind of thing.
"Music was a big part of the trip. For example, we were in a little town in Minas Gerais (a state the size of France) on Easter morning and we'd seen the serious Roman Catholic side of Brazil during a beautiful Easter procession, with people walking for miles not uttering a sound. But then, in the afternoon, large groups of people were everywhere, dancing to a drum and guitar and singing twenty to thirty songs, word for word, five or six verses each. The Brazilians really have rhythm.
'They run things in a crisp and professional manner, too. For instance, in the eleven flights I took in the country, every flight left within five minutes of its scheduled time. That is the antithesis of the stereotype we hear of Latin America. Brazil suffers from being lumped with everybody else. It's as different from the rest of Latin America as the United States is from Mexico.
"The Amazon was my biggest challenge because I was working under difficult conditions and time was short. I was there for only two or three days, and in the jungle for half a day-in a research area. I followed a little trail behind meteors, or woodsmen, who seemed to glide through the jungle like smoke. They led the way, and I struggled behind with my gear. Since there's very little light in the jungle, you have to use a tripod for the long exposures and I had a lot to carry. I made a rare find, though, according to the people who were there working on the wildlife-I found a silky anteater.
"All the research people in the area have suffered every ailment known to man, but they're still cheerful and still love the jungle. One Canadian lady, who has spent the last two years studying only frogs and snakes in one small area, lives in the jungle and does all her research at night with a flashlight. Another researcher was bitten by a bat while she was taking birds out of a mist net, an almost invisible device used for catching specimens without harm. As a consequence, she had to undergo ten injections for rabies. One can't help being impressed by the way these people take things of this sort in stride.
"I prefer to be in natural places, and yet I do like to go to cities, especially foreign cities. I traveled around with my parents when I was small, and I've always loved new locations. I was born in New York City, but we moved to Bogota, Colombia, when I was six months old, and then Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. I attended a British school there (blue blazers with the lion rampant, homework in black ink, that kind of thing), and then back to New York City-then to Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, before attending Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
"I studied European History at Wesleyan and started dabbling in photography. I believed then that you were supposed to get a job somewhere and do photography only on Saturdays if you liked it, and so I planned a career in teaching.
"I taught for six weeks and quit. It wasn't anything like I had pictured. I didn't like the environment. I didn't like the course matter-and I didn't like the faculty room where there was a mug with my name on it. That mug could still be there in twenty years, and if I stayed, I was assured a predictable salary-and a predictable position-in a predictable length of time. I wanted out.
"The transition to photography was, not smooth. I ran the gamut from corporate interviews to manual labor and none of it appealed to me. But I began easing into photography, taking pictures of children. It was one of those things that slowly, quietly grew, and escalated to the point where I realized one day that I could indeed make a living at it. That was fifteen years ago.
"My hope is to establish a series of pleasant, low-key relationships with travel people, and have an exchange of services where I can do a feature for them on what they do best, and in return, they can make space for me on the planes and in the places I want to shoot. Then I can come home and show folks how terrific it is Somewhere Else. There's a whole network of people who need pictures-travel agents, prospective tourists, and people who are promoting different aspects of travel.
"Contacts develop on the trips themselves. One of my contacts in Brazil was a gentleman who runs a souvenir and jewelry shop. Susie and I picked out the biggest item in his store (size not price), a huge stone coffee-table top made of semiprecious stones. When I went to pay him for it, he asked me if I ever shot videos. He needed a twenty-minute video about his store and he wanted to know if I could do it. 'If you and the travel people can work out my plane ticket, accommodations, and meals, I can do something very low budget for you,' I told him. 'That's nice,' he answered. 'And just to get our relationship off on the right foot, I'd like to give you the coffee-table top!'
"You get paid as you go in all sorts of ways-even with hundred-pound tabletops."
