CGSociety :: Artist Profile
1 October 2009, by Renee Dunlop
While he has won Oscars for VFX and worked with the best operators in the industry, Richard Edlund has been a photographer of the US Navy and of renowned rock and roll bands.
He's the inventor of the Pignose Amp, a hippie street car driver, USC instructor, and self-proclaimed "Japanophile", a country he's lived in and visited roughly 60 times. He's had an amazing life of luck and opportunity. "And it still keeps going."
That it does. Edlund fills his spare time on the boards of ASC, the Academy, and the VES and as a member of the Academy Technology Council, chair of the Academy Scientific and Technical Awards Committees, co-chairs the ASC Technology Committee and heads its Enlightenment Subcommittee though he credits chairman Curtis Clark, ASC, for doing the brunt of the work.
And he just had a one man show of his still photographs at the Leica Gallery in Salzburg, Austria. "I'm really into the digital world, I love digital still photography."
Photography was a love affair that began in the ninth grade when a friend lent Edlund a Minox spy camera. He enjoyed his clandestine photography so much he bought a contact printer, paper and chemicals, and by the tenth grade had purchased a 4x5 press camera and enlarger. He worked for the school paper, a stepping stone to the LA Examiner's high school sports section where he had a chance to rub elbows with seasoned press photographers.
By 1959 Edlund's photography career was already flourishing and about to point him in a new direction. He was just shy of eighteen years when he was hired to take "grip and grin" photos for Navy recruitment.
He spent the day at sea surrounded by two destroyers, a cruiser, a submarine, with cannons firing, 20mm guns gunning, depth charges dropping, and airplanes buzzing overhead, impressive enough to convince him to join the Navy too. He signed up within a week.
Navy days
For many, this would mean months on sea rations or swabbing decks. Not Edlund. Even when he fell asleep by the pool resulting in a severe sunburn that could have had him court marshaled (a soldier is considered Navy property) a sympathetic warrant officer took pity and let Edlund spend his days healing in the comfort of his air-conditioned office.
There, Edlund passed his days recuperating and honing his skills reading advanced photography books. Even when his orders came, Edlund landed a plum assignment: two years in Atsugi, Japan where he was stationed from 1959 to 1961. It was a great time for Edlund. The yen was 360 to the dollar, and he was living the good life as a second class photographer making $200 a month, big money in Japan at the time, staying at the fanciest hotels and seeing the best shows. But he wasn't just wasting time. "When I was in Japan, I was running the art department at the photo lab and started shooting aircraft accident reports."
He was also making a documentary under the guise of training, which gave Edlund the ability to check out whatever equipment he wanted. With a brand new 16mm Mitchell camera, a rebuilt processing machine, splicer, a moviola, and reversal film, Edlund started a motion picture department in the lab. He made many trade deals to help his cause, swapping less than perfect rejected photos for such filming necessities as a Navy station wagon and additional photo equipment.
Edlund's love of photography had continued to grow, so when he returned to California he enrolled in photography courses at USC. However, living back in the States didn't offer the financial status Edlund had enjoyed in Japan, and the cost of his education was becoming prohibitive. Instead of finishing his senior year, Edlund took a job at an optical house working with Joe Westheimer.
There he spent the next four years doing everything from sweeping the floor to hand lettering main titles for television. He rotoscoped the original Enterprise flyby for Star Trek, set up lights and shot inserts for TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Wild, Wild West, and The Addams Family. He even played "Thing" from The Addams Family. That is Edlund's hand in the title sequence.
It was at this point in his life, Edlund enjoyed his first life changing recognition. A drummer friend whose rock and roll band was performing on an old restored schooner asked Edlund to do a photo shoot of their performance. The rock band backed by the vintage environment provided some beautiful shots. For many, the tale would end on that happy but mellow note, but it happened that the groups' agent shared an office with Mark Gordon, the manager of the rock band The Fifth Dimension.
Gordon saw Edlund's shots and loved them, and wound up hiring Edlund to fly to Las Vegas and shoot an album cover for the band. With that simple twist of fate, Edlund became a successful rock and roll photographer, working casually as his economy needed from around 1967 to 1972. In that time he shot publicity shots, album covers and posters, as well as recording sessions and performance shots for 'The Fifth Dimension' and other bands like 'The Grass Roots', 'The Association', Warren Zevon, and 'Seals and Crofts'.
It was a good time for Edlund and his creativity continued to flow. During these 'hippie times' Edlund came up with the idea for a portable guitar amp, which he dubbed the Pignose, a name inspired by the volume knob design resembling, you guessed it, a pig's snout.
"I was at Pacific Radio getting something for one of my little projects. I looked into the display case and there was this amplifier about the size of a cigarette pack. I got it, picked out a speaker that looked pretty good, a potentiometer and a battery pack. It was a found invention that sounded fantastic." Again, his luck intervened. One day Edlund got a call from Wayne Kimble in LA, telling Edlund to "get down here, I've got Jimmy Guercio who is going to fund the Pignose!"
The Pignose amplifier.
Martin Guitar Company put the Pignose on the market and since Edlund and Kimble knew everyone in the rock and roll business, they were able to distribute the Pignose to musicians like Frank Zappa, George Harrison, Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, and of course Warren Zevon, who was the first to record using the amp, using it on his second album.
"Everybody who was anybody in the record business got a free Pignose." Unfortunately, even those that sold were too close to free when it came to lining Edlund's pocket. After a year, he was bored making amps, and he began looking for something that would satisfy his first love. To be behind the camera.
