Much more than a passport photo

I recently ventured into the Milton Mail Boxes business located in the Food Lion Shopping Center at 124 Broadkill Road to take a renewal passport photo and got much more in return. Kevin Fleming, the renowned Delaware photographer, just happened to step inside to see his friends and owners of the store. They are Angela and Zach Gaudlip, a very attractive and enterprising young couple who married a little over a year ago, and offer many different kinds of services as well as Kevin's photographs for sale in their store.

Kevin is well known as that romantic, swashbuckling, world-traveling figure who has worked for National Geographic. Just think back to the 1995 movie, "The Bridges of Madison County" starring Clint Eastwood, to picture what I mean. I used to thumb through the pages of the yellow-covered magazine to dream of faraway places I hoped to visit one day.

Kevin came to my first local domicile, a former smokehouse on Pilottown Road in Lewes, to photograph me for a News Journal piece titled "The Purple Painter Lady has no patience for rules." That article got me my start as an artist. Born in 1953, Kevin began his career, or should I say "calling," in Smyrna while he was in high school. In his family's basement, he developed photos in a makeshift darkroom with a candle in a red globe lamp that belonged to his mother. He also used an ice chest freezer for keeping his photochemical solutions the right temperature.

His first real job in photography was at Delaware State News when, according to him, it was like the Wild West, and then he moved on to the News Journal. Photography greats like Fred Comegys and Jim Graham recognized his talent early on. He has won three Photographer of the Year Awards, and produced 28 books featuring nature and Delaware scenes.

One of his greatest feats as a National Geographic photographer was capturing the only photograph of the assassination of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Kevin has been around the world twice, visiting 28 countries and all 50 states.

As Zach at Milton Mail Boxes took my passport photo that lucky day a couple of weeks ago, Kevin came into the store and a light bulb went off in his brain. "Why don't I take your photo?" he asked. "I'm creating a new book to be titled 500 Delawareans. I just took a photo of a striking-looking girl with waist-length pink braids!"

I don't have those, but I must have qualified somehow. He's so exquisitely visual; his mind is always going – thinking of light, color, settings and a multitude of different ideas. We arranged for him to come to my house the very next afternoon. "Where and when is the light best?" he asked. At first he wanted me to pose on top of my husband's green felt billiard table surrounded by my various paintings, but after evaluating the available light, he changed his mind.

We moved to the backyard. I had feverishly gone through my wardrobe to find something dramatic (not hard to do) and chose my fantastical turkey feather boa, a sequined top, and parakeet-sized fringed beaded earrings. My husband Jeff held up two large paintings behind me until his arms ached, but he persevered. "Work it, baby, work it!" Kevin prodded, making me feel like I was being photographed by Scavullo!

It was a golden autumnal day, and after the photo shoot, I gave Kevin a tour through my childhood home. I know his practiced eye found it a bit eccentric, but I am visual too and stood my own ground! He told me he once went on an assignment to an old lady's house for the Delaware State News. She had collected hundreds of dolls, which freaked him out. When I showed him my collection of nesting dolls in a primeval forest, he seemed to have a flashback. "What goes on in your mind?" he queried. "It's a rapidly whirling mental world,” I answered.

Kevin has worked prolifically despite dealing with some serious kidney issues, as in having to give himself dialysis three times a day at his home in Milton. This story should appear on his birthday, Friday, Nov. 8. We discovered during his visit that we are both Scorpios, and we share a preference for the same Pilot black rollerball pens, mine for writing columns and his for everything but signing his many autographed books. 

"It smears when I sign my autograph," he said. "And I've signed thousands!"