Cover Model
I never set out to be in front of the lens, and that’s ok, I’m a photographer, researcher, writer and not a professional model. But as with many in my profession, I have enough stand-in experience as a model to know how it is in the studio when on the lens side of the camera. I’ve ben photographed numerous times in the process of helping to make photo illustration, and one time it landed me on the cover of US News & World Report as a terrorist.
Let me be perfectly clear — I was not a terrorist. I only played one for a cover story on international terrorism. The story ran just days after Aldo Moro, the kidnapped Italian politician was discovered dead as his terrorist kidnappers, the Red Brigade dumped his body as a message of some kind (disdain, hate, who can tell what’s in the minds of terrorists? It’s not like they are normal people, they are thugs.)
For the cover shoot, I brought in my favorite ex-army parka, one that I picked up at a real army surplus sale back in high school. It had been on countless camping trips and excursions all through my late teen and college years, and since I was a bearded, long-haired kind of guy, I thought the army-ness of the coat would lend a certain look to the terror cover image. I also picked up a couple of balaclava-style stocking caps, because the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhoff gang were wearing them.
Photo editor Berni Schoenfield brought his gun to the session: a .44 magnum, it was a real Dirty Harry type of revolver. The gun was a beast, so Berni figured it would lend the right kind of threatening image to the photo illustration we were making for the cover.
But I have a big head. No, I don’t mean ego-wise, although I probably have my moments. Physically, I carry the Scottish blood of someone with a large head, so when I held the pistol up next to my face in a mockery of James Bond, the .44 magnum did not look all that large. In fact, after the magazine came out with my picture on the cover, one over-eager reader wrote to the editors that our photo illustration was a failure because no self-respecting terrorist would use a .22 caliber revolver. Berni was allowed to answer that one, to the effect that cover model Wooddell has such a large head that it dwarfs even the Dirty Harry .44 magnum he is holding. Or something along those line.
When the image appeared on the cover of US News and World Report dated May 22, 1978, it was credited: photo by USN&WR. As I recall, the staff photographers Thomas J O’Halloran and Warren K Leffler worked on the cover shoot together, with special projects photo editor Berni Schoenfield standing over their shoulders, directing the studio session.
No, they didn’t pay me extra at USN&WR for playing cover model for the day. It was all in the day’s work for someone in the picture department, but I did get a free ham from the company at the holidays, an employee perk of that media company that was patronizing and yet appreciated at the same time. Each year they gave the employees a choice between a ham and turkey. As Berni would say, only a putz would take the turkey.
Some of the modeling jobs I worked on at Nation’s Business include a hand-model cover shoot with David Valdez and Gary Kieffer collaborating on the photography for a story by staff editor Henry Eason.
A life-style/health article was about eating healthy snacks: Photography was by Judith Sloan, one of my favorite freelancers when I was picture editor at Nation’s Business. (Polaroid lighting test on left — B&W in the magazine from color transparency)
Managing Editor Henry Altman Sneezing for Nation’s Business
Directing the managing editor Henry Altman on how to sneeze dramatically for the camera in this polaroid, but the veteran copy editor himself stood in with a great sense of humor for the real deal. Photo by Nation’s Business staff photographer (and former New York Times contract photographer) T. Michael Keza,
Credit card hand model for Nation’s Business
One last hand-model job, this one is a mystery to me today, but I think it was for a story on credit card fraud — or maybe the dangers of smoking, who knows, some of us still smoked back then. Here the polaroid is somewhat posterized by my scanner.
Maybe one of the photographers can comment — who shot the credit card image? Valdez, Kieffer, or Keza?
- David W Wooddell, November 13, 2011









“I create stories.”