Born in 1951 and raised in California, Gary pursued a divinity degree before training in advertising photography at the Art Center College of Design then in Los Angeles. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Photography from the Art Center in 1975, he assisted fashion and celebrity photographer, Moshe Brakha, who recommended Gary as staff photographer for United Artist Records [now, EMI/Liberty Records] in Hollywood. After two years with UA/EMI, Gary decided to work freelance and moved with his wife Joanie, to the tiny town of Silver Plume located at an elevation of 2760 meters (9,201 ft.) in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where they now live with their five children.
After his move to Colorado, Gary photographed his music clientele entirely out of his travel cases. He and this portable studio have photographed Kenny Rogers in the dressing rooms of Las Vegas, toured with the Doobie Brothers, spent a month in Russia with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, chased UFOs on a US Coast Guard cutter with the Jefferson Starship and continually solved the usual studio problems in "un-studio-like" rooms, rooftops, and back streets.
In 1979, unable to find an acceptable light diffusion product to bring a studio quality lighting to photography on the road, Gary decided to create his own solution based on the design of a mountain tent. After numerous "light tent" prototypes, Gary together with Tom Frost, a world class mountain climber and outdoor equipment designer (Chouinard Equipment), formed the company, CHIMERA, which successfully introduced portable light diffusion tents to advertising, portrait photographers and cinematographers throughout the world.
In 1986, Gary formed his own company, Plume Ltd., to market a more
sophisticated light diffusion "tent" named WAFER which featured
his novel "negative" solution to the softbox "hot spot" and
many improvements suggested to him by photographers using his earlier
product. Numerous original products have followed, many of which you
find here. Other design commissions include projects for Manfrotto,
Italy; Bowens, UK; Lowel-Lights, USA; FlashStyx, USA; Remington Products,
USA; Lightware USA, INKA, NL; SphereOne, USA; COMET and TAKE Inc, Japan and NaiheFuture, Macao.
Gary continues to photograph and to design equipment. He travels extensively to lecture and demonstrate his ideas about lighting and the tools required to make photographs. Locally, he has been a member of his Town Board for the last 31 years, serving two years as the Mayor of Silver Plume and is a Planning Commissioner for Clear Creek County Colorado. His personal studies have moved into the roots of modern religious forms (fraterholme.com).
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