Photo Shoot: "Just a kiss of flash": Remembering Times photographer Sherwood Landers
“Just a kiss of flash,” was one of Sherwood Landers' favorite sayings describing his lighting technique as the photo crew would gather in the late afternoon around the 6-foot light table, eyeing each other’s film — all of us waiting for a verdict from the photo editor.
No one ever called him Sherwood that I recall. In the newsroom, he was “Woody.”
He died on April 24 after a long bout of poor health. But as a Cape Cod Times icon, he lives on in all our newsroom stories.
When I arrived in the early 1980s, Woody had moved into the photo department from the newsroom. He was an artist at heart. He had an old VW Beetle, light blue in color, that was well along in mileage. It was a stick shift. Weren’t they all? Catching a ride with him several times was not something you would forget. He could get that thing up to what felt unimaginable speeds between the many traffic lights along Main Street Hyannis.
He wasn’t the spot news hound that Chief Photographer Gordon Caldwell was with the police scanner always blaring. Business photos and features were Woody's thing. But he took on a weekly task that the rest of us hated - “Sound Off.”
This weekly column would send him out for a person-in-the-street piece with a reporter. The duo would head out to a location across the Cape with a specific question. Woody would get a quick portrait to go with their response. This would run as a Q-and-A piece in the Saturday paper with 5 or 6 portraits. He processed the film, always black and white, and then printed up the headshots.
The assignment ate up the better part of the day and kept one photographer out of the lineup for action-packed photojournalism. He never complained about it.
Woody was also a foodie, back before that was a thing. He worked a second job, which was at local restaurants, and loved food. He had our mouths watering as he described his evening dinner plans with detailed menu descriptions. To this day, I know how to cook asparagus correctly because of his coaching.
Back to photo lighting, the image with this story is one Woody made on July 19, 1995. The Mayflower II had sailed into Provincetown to reenact the signing of the Mayflower Compact. In the hold of the ship, "Pilgrim Fathers" gathered along with Woody, his Nikon, and trusty Vivitar 283 strobe.
He bounced his “kiss of flash” off the old wood adding just a touch of warmth to the scene. It looked like a Rembrandt painting and won him a first-place award in the New England News and Publisher’s Association annual competition. A framed print of it then took up an honored spot along the hallway leading from Main Street to the newsroom, joining the many iconic photos and front pages from the Times’ history — which Woody will always be a memorable part of.
Contact Steve Heaslip at sheaslip@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cctphoto.
Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Cape Cod Times subscription. Here are our subscription plans.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Remembering Cape Cod Times photographer Sherwood "Woody Landers"
