Wizard of Light : Young San Diego Dynamo Flashes New Methods for World of Photography

Dean Collins is one of those rare human machines that make the rest of us wonder how they do it, how they find the time in the day, how they come up with their ideas . . . how they make all that money.

Collins is a whiz kid (photographer-innovator-educator), and his life resembles 90 atomic power plants operating at one time. He works 14-hour days, six or seven days a week. Thirty percent of the year he’s on the road lecturing--down from about 50% the last two years. Meanwhile, he puts out a monthly photography newsletter with an international circulation of about 4,000, creates photographic accessories, lectures to classes in his studio and somehow finds time to design and shoot photographs for such clients as Hyatt Corp., Kyocera Corp. and Fuji Film.

By any measure, the man is a success, but the feeling is that, at 32, he is just beginning. Already he runs four businesses, all begun less than five years ago, which together gross nearly $1 million a year.

More importantly, he is recognized by some of the top commercial photographers in the nation for his knowledge about the effect of lighting in photography, especially color photography. He not only understands lighting, he teaches others what he knows. And he creates accessories that make his knowledge easier for others to use.

When Collins explains what his life is about, be prepared for a wide-ranging verbal jaunt that stretches from a small studio in an old industrial section of downtown San Diego to Switzerland, to auto racing, to the White House, to an explanation of the physical properties of light.

“What I’m doing is generating a high-nutrition burger of information,” he said of his varied educational efforts. A lot of hot-shot photographers and big-name publications are eager for a bite of that burger, including photographers from the Washington Post, Newsweek, National Geographic and the White House. What he offers is a new approach to photography through lighting.

“You cannot go to any school to learn lighting. I decided to start my own research school,” he said. After studying the German method of training photographers in Switzerland, he took what he wanted and put it into the American vernacular. From the Germans he learned structure.

“In German-speaking countries--Germany, Austria, Switzerland--you have to have a college degree before you can open a studio,” Collins said. “They want to see a photographer with a college education. Here, you have a roll of duct tape and a business card, and you’re in business. The camera’s optional. That’s how we work. That’s the free-enterprise system, and it’s good. America is by far the major leader in photography. Always have been--always will be. That’s because we’re not organized.”

Collins has added--but not imposed--organization on his photography by breaking down the physics of light. “I see photography as an art and a science: a predictable art when it becomes a controllable science,” he said.

Collins blends the intuitive and the analytical. Like what Ansel Adams did with black-and-white photography, Collins has developed a zone system for color as a basis to work from. “Ansel Adams saw a range of contrasts versus the limits of the film,” Collins said. “He took film and placed it to the situation. Commercial photography places the situation to the film.

“When I walk into a studio, everything’s black. Nothing’s happening. The idea is that you don’t just put light on a set. You create contrasts. A photograph can be created with very little knowledge these days. You don’t make the film. You don’t make the chemistry. You don’t make the optic. You don’t make the camera. The only thing the photographer truly manufactures any more is his or her light. That’s the raw product, and sometimes you don’t even manufacture that.”

Collins’ skills are regularly illustrated in his monthly publication, Finelight. In a photo featuring black hands and white pearls, he showed how to use reflection for the black subject and shadow for the white to show form.

Most of Collins’ efforts and fame have been in the area of teaching. His studio was the last business he formed.

“I wasn’t prepared to go out and produce imagery, so I started out producing technical data,” he said. “Then I said, ‘OK, I feel worthy, so I’ll start shooting.’ ” His skills are now showcased in an elegant national ad he created and shot for Hyatt Corp. employing a tall glass of champagne. He is currently working on a national ad campaign for Fuji Film. Having analyzed, understood and synthesized light, Collins can show photographers how to create any shade of any color once they understand how light affects photography.

His “research school” is actually the output of all of Collins’ activities. Finelight publications, now described as a 12-part lighting course; Lightform, his manufacturing arm; Aardvark/Collins, the lecture company, and Collins and Associates, his photographic studio, feed each other. “I love having Finelight, because it forces me each month to come up with a new problem to top the previous one,” he said. “The studio can get routine. Finelight keeps me creative.”

Collins is a big man whose energy adds inches to his presence. Born in Vista, he was quickly disenchanted with college, where he studied mechanical engineering. He dropped out in the early 1970s. After working in a Los Angeles studio, he went to Europe and studied photography in Lucerne, Switzerland. There he discovered the “system” of photography that he modified and is teaching Americans.

Today he is on the road with his traveling six-projector, computerized slide show, giving eight-hour presentations to groups of 300 to 700 photographers in Europe and the United States. In the next 30 days he will appear in Arkansas, New Jersey, Seattle, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Austin, Washington and Boston. In January, he will appear for the third year in a row at National Geographic’s annual seminar for its photographers in Washington.

That is where photographer Jim Sugar “discovered” Collins. Sugar is a top commercial and editorial photographer based in Mill Valley. “He has an understanding of light that is unlike anybody I have ever met,” Sugar said. “He has a knowledge of how it functions and can explain it in simple terms.”

“I work very, very hard,” said Sugar, who started last week at his studio in Mill Valley, then shot an assignment in San Diego, checked in with National Geographic in Washington, worked on another assignment in North Carolina, went back to Washington and then returned to Mill Valley. Sugar, who has learned Collins’ techniques, works regularly on contract assignments with National Geographic and handles commercial assignments, such as shooting a quarterly report for DuPont. This week he is shooting the annual report for AT&T; and two assignments for National Geographic.

“It’s everything I can do to do just one of these things, and Dean does four things,” Sugar said. The reason, he said, is that Collins’ life is “totally directed toward photography, and it consumes him all the time.”

“He’s terribly, terribly focused on photography. He has no hobbies and almost no outside interests, but an extraordinary amount of energy,” Sugar said. “There are no other diversions that tend to soften other people’s lives. When you meet the top people in any field, you see that they are consumed. That’s what happens at the level at which Dean practices.”

Living with Collins is not the most convenient life for his wife, Jennifer. “Dean is an extremely intense individual,” she said. “I just have to let him be. We’ve been married about four years, and together six.” They met when she was working at a photography store. Now she trains horses, a business Collins helped set her up in. It helps when he’s on the road. “It can be a lonely existence,” she said.

But there is the other side of Collins, the part she liked from the first time she met him. “He’s just so moral,” she said. “It sounds so corny, but it’s true. He sets his mind on something and really goes after it. His feeling is, if you’re going to do it, do it.”

The irony of Collins’ work is that, as a college dropout, he has become a major-league educator. “Education is one of the most concise forms of communication there is,” he said. “It’s highly measurable. You can see how your ability to define information is successful. Education can form or inform. Most education forms people: monkey see, monkey do. I in- form them. It’s hard to do. It’s the longest way around. But that way people become responsible for their own direction. I never say something is right or wrong. I say here are the facts.”

To finance his projects, Collins took a page from Andy Granatelli and solicited manufacturers of photographic equipment. Like the famed race car driver who got industrial sponsors such as STP to finance his race cars, Collins approached businesses in his field. From Fuji to Hasselblad to major makers of studio accessories, they have lined up to support this wizard of light.

He also had the fortunate instinct to line up a partner early on to handle much of the business side of his activities. Gary Burns, a graphic artist and illustrator, is a partner in Finelight and Lightform. Collins’ desire for quality carries over into all aspects of his businesses.

Collins impressed John McDonnell, a Washington Post photographer, not only with his concepts of photography, but also because of the professional arrangements he made for a group attending lectures in his studio.

“It was a well-run machine,” McDonnell said. “They had scouted out the motels. The whole three-day course was just right. We were very well taken care of.”

And as a platform speaker, Collins gets universally high marks from those who have attended his sessions.

Bill Fitzpatrick, a White House photographer, who has become a Collins convert, remembered getting a sense of the force that drives Collins.

“Before one of his talks at National Geographic,” Fitzpatrick said. “I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Like a professional football player, he was psyching himself up to go into a game.” There stood the guest speaker in a corner, talking to himself, jumping up and down, psyching himself up for his audience. Fitzpatrick had glimpsed the essence of Collins.