Meeting of the Masters the aftermath
Meeting of the Masters the aftermath. This is the final post on this event and my final thoughts on it.
The workshop was done, everyone was on their planes and all was well. I had mixed feelings on it as some of the guys I wished I hadn’t met, most of the guys, I was ecstatic I did! I learned so much on photography, shootouts and workshops and business dealings. It was a wild and busy, but great weekend for me.
David Hickey and Art Ketchum both lived in CA and went on to have a great friendship. David went to Karen Ketchum-Gupta’s home for dinner (Karen was owner of Backdrop Outlet) and they all got along famously.
Voclain and Edelman went to lunch with my then wife that Friday. She wanted to talk to them about business and get their feelings on everything. She right away had a very strong dislike for Edelman and let me know in her opinion, he was the absolute weakest link. While I didn’t agree he was weak, to me, he work was the weakest of the five but that was saying a lot. At the end of their dinner, the check came and she was thinking they would pay for it, they handed it to her and she paid. She was a HUGE Voclain fan until that lunch. After that, she felt he was an ‘Asshole’. We were members of Voclains’ photography forum and we didn’t renew. Mostly because we stopped getting info out of it, but because she didn’t want to support him with our money.
Ivan Otis continued on being amazing as ever and he and I kept in touch and still do.
Where are they now?
Art Ketchum: Shortly after Meeting of the Masters, on September 18, 2011, I lost my friend. My mentor. My photography confidant. COPD claimed his life and one of the last things Art said to me was “When I die, I’ll be dead. There is no heaven or hell. I stopped believing in fairy-tales when I was a child.” There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my mentor and friend. I miss Art daily and I think bout him every single time I pick up my camera. I know he doesn’t believe in after life, but none the less; Art; I miss you my friend. I love you and will tell everyone about you always.
David Hickey: For a long while, David went on being David. As I said before; David draws you in. You WANT to be next to him when he’s in the room. He shot models for a long time and around 2016 he stopped shooting models. Tired of the Cali girl flake factor and how political everything was becoming, David felt he did all he could do in photography, all he wanted to do, and left. He now shoots amazing sunsets with his Iphone. He spends his days with Karen and their two puppies. David suffered a stroke that almost took his life so he now spends every day loving every moment. I will always be grateful for everything he taught me (and it was a lot) and I’ll always tell the world who he was.
Ivan Otis: Ivan is still in Toronto, CA shooting and being Crazy-Ivan. Love for life, zeal and all things off-kilter, Ivan is just a perfect human being. Ivan shoots fashion and even convinced a hotel worker to shoot some nudes for his Vampire book he was working on. When COVID hit, Ivan and I stopped talking and last year, Facebook closed my account out and that was my contact with Ivan. When I want to know how much a failure I am at photography, I just visit his website and wish I had the creative mind he does.
Joe Edelman: I am sure Edelman is still taking photographs and singing how amazing Nikon is.
Kirk Voclain: Shortly after the event, I got a message from Voclain asking that I remove his name from the event because he was getting in trouble with the church elders. It’s funny because the links had been there for about a year and it wasn’t a problem. However, once he got his check it was a problem. I removed them at the time because it wasn’t a big loss for me. At that time I had really started looking at everything and disliked the zero texture Voclain had in his images, so I had officially moved on from him. Voclain had a photography forum that was private unless you paid. Some people sent me a comment where Voclain said I black and fat something like that. I wanted to send him an email saying “Funny you’d make comments about my weight, being you literally look like a bag of stuffed wet sponges” But I didn’t. He’s from deep down south so we know his opinion on black people.
As for me, I’ve continued on doing what I do. I am thinking though, that I may have to do another event like this in 2025 or 2026. Why? Because I just don’t learn!