One of my favorite portraits came (again) out of just dumb luck, both of timing and the way the light happened to fall on the subject. I was scheduled to cover a boxing program during the Summer of 1990 at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, NJ. We had heard that former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson might make an appearance. The timing wasn’t the best, Tyson had just lost the title (and his first fight ever) to Buster Douglas about 6 months before.
As I wandered around the restored 19th Century canal town in between fights, I saw a slight commotion in the distance. Following a faint light, I saw seated in a folding metal chair Mike Tyson, a larger than life character, looking very reserved and humble. As people shouted to get his attention, Tyson just sat quietly, not rude, just seeming to be lost in thought.
It was extremely dark with only a couple tungsten lights shining on him for the interview he was about to give. I pushed my T-Max to about 6400 asa and held my breath as I dropped to one knee shooting about three frames at around 1/30 sec. After the interview began, I left thinking I didn’t get anything worth keeping. Arriving back to the darkroom I push processed my film to the limit still, the negatives were very thin.
Making a couple prints I was shocked that I had indeed captured a moment. Something I hadn’t even realized while pushing the shutter. This is what Ive always loved about photography. From viewfinder to negative (or digital card) to darkroom or computer, sometimes you’re able to pull out something from nothing. And on this night twenty years ago in Stanhope, I was lucky enough to captured a sensitive, introspective portrait of the “baddest man on the planet.”
