I always wanted to be a clown
For those new to my blog, I was an advertising and corporate photographer for almost fifty years, and now being semi-retired I teach an online class with the BPSOP, and I also conduct my personal “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops around our planet.
One of my favorite categories to write a post in is Anecdotes. It brings back great memories of the assignments and projects I used to shoot on a daily basis.
Back in my youth, as in my very early thirties, I shot a lot of assignments for a magazine called Texas Monthly. When they called me to do a photo essay on the Ringland Bros. & Barnum and Baily Circus, I was all over it like a cheap fitting Lassie costume.
I decided to shoot a series of portraits featuring the clowns backstage and use a large softbox on a Bogen boom that had wheels, so I could just roll it around behind the large arena; from clown to clown; worked like a charm!!
I asked the boss clown if I could be made up and go out with the rest of the clowns on what they called a walk-around during the intermission. My assistant and I did two shticks:
We were in the group of seventeen clowns that were piled into a very small car, and when we all popped out there were “little “people” waiting with big, soft mallets to hit us on the heads. In the second shtick my assistant and I walked around with an oversized book that said, “The history of aviation” on the cover. We would walk up to the kids and open it revealing a large fly; why, I had no idea!!
I loved the idea of my true persona completely hidded, so much so that I would up shooting the portraits while still in my clown make-up. 
Here’s a sampling of some of my portraits, and by the way, the photo at the top of the blog is me on the left, the boss clown in the middle, and my assistant on the right.
Enjoy:
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of my blog. Come shoot with me sometime and we’ll clown around together.
JoeB
