©2009 Chicago Tribune
A Chicago classic character. Maitre d’ at the Italian Village restaurant for fifty years. Knew Pavarotti, Sinatra, all the Italian heavyweights. Mayor Daley? Knew him when he was just a law student kid. The picture is all ambient light. Lighting subjects with the ambient available is so counter-intuitive. As photographers we’ve got our magic kit of attachments and secret-sauce recipes that we itch to use. But sometimes “you dance with the gal that brought ya”. In this case the mood of the place was too evocative of history and the twinkles of romance to not explore the possibility of letting the mood speak for itself.