Clint Black, Amboy CA, 1997. Immediately after our first photo shoot in New York City, Clint hired me to shoot a music video with him in California. It was all at night, around a campfire...it was very dark and moody, fire lights flickering, with torches and flashlights. It was a challenge, and I was up for it. Clint and I hit it off talking about our shared love of the desert, cars, and the open road. So when he needed to shoot his next album cover, “Nothin’ But the Tail Lights”, he called me. I told him I had the perfect location—Amboy—the little town I owned in the Mohave desert.It was 3 and a half hours from LA. This sleepy, deserted, broken down town—it offered me endless possibilities—the texture, the patina. It was like I owned my own movie set in the middle of nowhere. We managed to get Clint and his wife, actress Lisa Hartman, to drive out there. We ran around my town shooting all day—in the motel with Lisa wrapped in a towel, him sitting outside in the bright desert sun on a chair with his guitar. We were taking our time, getting creative and having fun playing with the deserted landscape. We shot all day and got some great stuff, but really, we were waiting for night to fall to get the shot we needed for the album cover.I rented this old 50s Buick and set up a shot on Route 66 with the car pulling away on the highway as the sun was just starting to go down, its taillights glowing in this post-sunset, late-evening light. I did a time exposure, with just enough flash to light him while keeping that red taillight glow from the car’s rear. It wasn’t just lighting my subject, the whole shot had to be composed, set up and controlled in terms of lighting and exposure. We really had to slow it down to make it perfect…and get the shot.
