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© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
By Pam Rosenblatt
At the May 24th contributors meeting, the regular attendees were all abuzz, anxiously
awaiting the entrance of a man whose career and presence promised to fascinate them. They weren’t disappointed.
In walked a clean cut, slightly salted, black haired man wearing dungarees, a two toned blue and white small-checkered shirt and a spring navy blue vest through the doorway of The Somerville News office. He carried a white cardboard envelope, contents unknown. Who was this man and what did he hold under his arm?
He sat down in a chair, opened the envelope and took out dozens of original photos of such rock stars as Ted Nugent, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and lots more. Questions from the contributors rang out. Where did you get your first job? What type of camera do you use? What type of lighting do you use? Would you say your life paralleled the rock stars of the day? He answered all these questions and more with a smile on his face.
His name is Ron Pownall. A Somerville resident, Pownall is one of the country’s greatest rock star photographers and his work is legendary.
Born in Delaware, Pownall attended Lake Forest College located north of Chicago. In his freshman year at college, three or four older students who taught him the intricacies of black and white photography befriended him. Then, one summer, he interned at the Chicago Tribune.
“A friend of mine who graduate several years before me worked as a sportswriter
for the Trib. The sports department and the photo department were next to each other,” Pownall recalled. “So he kept saying, ‘Come down. Come down.’ So I lucked into an interview. And they liked me enough to hire me.”
Pownall’s photography career first started in 1968, at 21 years old. Immediately, the Chicago Tribune sent him out into the world of professional photography. He was only a college student and his first photographs, which were of a major fire, made the Chicago Tribune’s front page.
His stint at the Chicago Tribune was just the beginning for Pownall. From the early 1970’s and beyond, Pownall went on to photograph the most famous rock musicians and entertainers of the time.
He lived a lifestyle that was “immersed in the culture of the day”. He was accepted by most of the entertainers and documented his interactions with them, making an extensive photojournalism archive which can be viewed on his website or in his Brickbottom studio.
Pownall has had the same clients for years, and not one has ever left him. “Aerosmith and I go back to ’73. Boston to ’76. I still do all their work,” he said in his Brickbottom studio. “I am vehemently anti-paparazzi. The whole idea of intrusive photography like that is sickening to me. And, by that token, all of these people whom I worked with would let me take any pictures.”
He went on to emphasize that “Every artist that I work with knows that I would not put out a compromising picture.”
Pownall is not a man who makes compromises in his work. When he was working regularly as a rock star photographer, every nook and cranny physical aspect of the photography process was carried out before publication and his lighting process was just as carefully planned.
“Well, basically, I tried not to use the [camera] lights. 90% of what I shot, I would use stage lighting. That was the fun of it – turning on all these different stage lights. And being able to capture that the image looked like what was really happening,” Pownall said.
Interested in achieving clarity of his photographs, he said, “[The lighting] was simply a way to allow me to use very fine grained film. I was into clarity, just obsessive clarity of picture. I didn’t like grainy pictures the way they looked. I liked to use what is called low ASA film, so you can have clarity.”
Pownall’s photographic style is unique. “I don’t think that there is a textbook style, frankly. Since I look at these [photographs], one of the things you learn is that there are good angles that obviously work and some of the obvious looking angles do not work. I always wanted to find some angle that was a little bit more dramatic and not just a portrait. But to be in a place where I could snap at a moment where something is happening but also at a dramatic angle. I rarely stand in front of the artist….I’m surprised at how many people do that.”
Pownall photographed the Chicago Riots on August 28, 1968 at Grant Park, Chicago.
His credits include such magazines as Rolling Stone, Spin, Newsweek, and many other rock and roll magazines. He also sells many photos to TV shows like “Behind the Music” on VH1 and “E True Hollywood” on the Entertainment Network, he said.
His photos have graced such albums and CDs’ covers as Aerosmith’s Pandora’s Box and Bootleg; Joe Perry Project’s I’ve Got The Rock & Rolls Again; and Susan Tedeschi’s Just Won’t Burn.
He was the tour photographer for Aerosmith, Boston, Ted Nugent, and Meatloaf.
And he has worked for such clients as Bette Midler, Liza Minelli, Bob Seger, and Susan Tedeschi, as revealed on his website.
Currently, Pownall doesn’t tour as much as he did in his younger years. He enjoys photographing celebrity and non-celebrity weddings as well as little leaguers for their team pictures, and coaching sports teams that his teenage sons play on.
He is also interested hiring young photographers getting started in the business to assist him — as long as they have knowledge about photography. ‚ÄúI need someone who‚Äôs into it, and committed,‚Äù he said.
As for modern technology, he likes digital photography for its convenience but misses film for its technical advantages. Pownall said, “I’d go back to film in a flash.”
He started dabbling in digital photography in 2002 and pursuing the craft seriously in 2004. He shoots 35-millimeter film now on occasion, he said.
Pownall admits that he may be a little bit envious of today’s digital image photographers. “Well, it’s funny. I look back at all these photos on the wall. And there’re all taken with rudimentary equipment. No autofocus. No metering. And a zoom that was the first serious legitimate zoom that was developed by Nikon. It’s like it was hard work to get this. You had to know what you’re doing big time,” he said
With all this said and done, Pownall said, “I just bought my dad a film camera. He’s in his 80s. It cost about a quarter of what it would have cost five years ago.”
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