Wedding photography is a very challenging genre that requires a lot of versatility both as a photographer and in terms of gear. As such, 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses are highly popular options, but they are far from the only choices for wedding work. This great video essay features a seasoned wedding photographer discussing some of the reasons he prefers using prime lenses for his work instead. 

Coming to you from John Branch IV Photography, this interesting video essay discusses why he prefers prime lenses for wedding work. One of the most obvious advantages of a prime lens is the wider aperture, which can be quite useful in dimly lit venues, but one point I found particularly interesting and important is the increased consistency. Because of the fixed focal lengths and the compositional limitations imposed by prime lenses, you are more forced to develop a certain style and approach to composition, which, in turn, lends a higher level of consistency to your photos. Check out the video above for the full rundown. 

If you would like to continue to learn about wedding photography, be sure to check out “How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer With Lee Morris and Patrick Hall!”

Glasgow, UK

The Duke of Wellington statue outside the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, which has been adorned with a new traffic cone. There is speculation that the latest addition to Glasgow’s famous statue has been put in place to mark the end of the Banksy exhibition Cut and Run, which closed on Monday

Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

DEAL NEWS – Take your photography efforts to new heights with the Ninja Dragons Blade X 4K Dual-Camera Drone for $79.97 (reg. $199.99) during this Labor Day sale through September 4.

There’s a sense of freedom that comes with taking a picture. For starters, there’s the ability to freeze a moment that can’t be replicated. There’s also a sense of accomplishment that accompanies framing a moment from a perspective unique to you.

The emergence of drones has taken the freedom photography offers to another level. It’s opened access to angles and perspectives previously unknown to the masses. A recent survey by the Department of Transportation found that more than one million people counted among drone owners.

Take your photography efforts to new heights this Labor Day and purchase the Ninja Dragons Blade X 4K Dual-Camera Drone for $79.97 (reg. $199.99). Act quickly, as this special Labor Day price ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on September 4.

You’ll be able to capture beautiful moments with its 4K HD front camera and secondary 720p bottom camera. It offers eight to 12 minutes of flight time and has a remote-control distance of 393 to 492 feet. It is also foldable for portability.

A one-click takeoff and landing function allows your drone to fly practically anywhere it’s permitted. Gesture controls also assist with smooth flying, as it will enable smart flight controls through the use of simple gestures.

Photos are where this device shines. And thanks to its remote control, users can watch images in real time while they control its flight patterns.

The drone uses a 3.7V 500mAh lithium battery, while the remote control runs on three AAA batteries. The AAA batteries aren’t included. Users can expect their drone to reach a full charge in 120 minutes.

Whether for fun or a new vantage point for photos, this drone is a winner.

Purchase the Ninja Dragons Blade X 4K Dual-Camera Drone for $79.97 (reg. $199.99) before 11:59 p.m. Pacific on September 4, and enjoy this special Labor Day deal. 

Prices subject to change.

Past exhibitions at Galerie Teleport included “Water Roars, Forests Roar,” (Voda Hučí, Bory Šumí) which ran from May 17th to June 9th, 2023 and featured the works of photographer Hiep Duong Chi. Curated by Štěpánka Stein, this exhibition delved into cultural identity and everyday life, offering a unique perspective on Czech society and its interactions with diverse cultures.

If there is one thing Jake Ricker has learned about himself over the past 36 years, it’s that he has something of an obsessive personality. What Ricker never knows, though, it just what form his next obsession is going to be.

For the past five years, it’s been taking pictures on the Golden Gate Bridge. Every day for the past five years, almost.

“Definitely six to seven days a week,” Ricker said. “I think this year along, I’ve only missed like three or four days.”

Now, it should be noted that Ricker does not take pictures of the bridge like the rest of us do: focusing on its architecture and iconic setting. Ricker is a street photographer, candidly capturing the people who flock to the world-famous landmark by the millions.

“There’s just so many characters in the city and there’s so many tourists and bicycles and car accidents and motorcycles,” Ricker said. “There are so many things that can happen at any moment that are all kind of condensed on this little strip of concrete over the ocean.”

But coming to the bridge every day over the years has exposed Ricker to the dark side of what can happen here. On his daily walks, he has encountered many people in crisis threatening to end their lives by jumping.

In those moments, Ricker balances his humanity with his desire to chronicle the reality of life on the bridge. Ricker, who says over the years he has developed a good relationship with the officers who patrol the bridge, will alert them to any signs of trouble.

He will then stay and engage with the person until the patrol arrives. It has happened, Ricker says, dozens of times.

“There were days when I had a normal job and I would take the day off from work (to come to the bridge) and then happened to stop someone from jumping,” Ricker said. “So, I just thought, ‘If I went to work that day, that person might not be here.’”

It was in that way that Ricker’s photography project turned into something of a humanitarian mission.

Still, Ricker is not heading out every day looking to save people; he just wants to take their pictures. It’s just that he instinctively knows when to do one and when to do the other.

“I feel like I was oddly prepared to be in this position,” Ricker said. “It was all meant to be so.”

Ricker doesn’t not know at this time how many days, or years, he will continue coming to the bridge. The entire endeavor has been a financial burden on him. He is thousands of dollars in debt and currently has more than one thousand rolls of film waiting to be developed once he can afford to pay for it.

Still, every day Ricker does choose to show up has the potential to be a fortunate one for someone in need.

“If it was my friend or family member out there, I wish someone would just talk to them and be there for them when they thought they didn’t have anybody.”

Midday is normally not the time to put your camera up. Contrasty light is not the best for most color images. Move to infrared and we have a whole new ball game. When the light gets harsh and you add some greenery and clouds, imaging gets good.

Infrared

You can probably find a camera languishing on the shelf that can be converted to infrared. I used a Panasonic GH4. LifePixel Infrared is the company I use and recommend for conversions. Their website is a great source to learn about various infrared conversions. I personally am a fan of the traditional 720 nanometers. Your taste may vary to deep dark IR or even color IR. Study the website to see what options you may enjoy. Just know that having an infrared camera in your kit expands your time of being able to capture interesting photos.

Driving on Highway 160

Traveling in the middle of the day with clouds peppering the sky can be a good time with the infrared camera. When you are making miles and hours in a car it’s nice to have an excuse to stop the car, stretch and make some cool photos.

Red rocks, highway and several layers of cloud were of interest to me. Composition and contrast either make or break IR images.

LifePixel Infrared

Here’s a peek at what the Lifepixel IR website holds for learning about IR options. You’ll find examples of various choices of filter will yield. There are also tips on how to process your files.

Know that when you use a basic IR filter of 720NM as I do, your files will be magenta if you view them in color. One benefit of current cameras is the ability to change the view on your LCD to monochrome. While this is not how the final IR image will look it gets you closer. FYI, I always capture three exposures. Sometimes it is necessary to take the three images and blend those together for full tonal range before the final processing to infrared.

Lifepixel Infrared is not the only camera conversion company. It’s the one I use, and have experience with. Because of that, I became an affiliate. As an affiliate, I do receive a small fee if you use my link to purchase. Kolari is the other major US infrared camera conversion site you can try.

You can see more of my infrared imaging in these articles:

Yours in Creative Photography, Bob

Two friends walked into a diner to speak about the magic of a dead man.

“Amazing what he left behind,” said Garry Parmett, an autograph collector, halfway through an omelet. “He had the golden era of Hollywood in those shoe boxes.”

“Everyone who was anybody,” added David Kaye, a bookseller. “He had the whole cast of ‘The Godfather.’”

“Jesus,” said Parmett. “He knew where to go.”

“Dedication,” said Kaye, who finished his eggs and nodded for the bill.

“You couldn’t do that today,” Parmett said.

“No way,” said Kaye. “Impossible.”

The man in question was John Verzi, who for six decades collected around 25,000 autographs and took more than 12,000 pictures of everyone from Audrey Hepburn to Brigitte Bardot to Jimi Hendrix and Alice Cooper. Then he disappeared. He ended up in a trailer park in Vegas, watching soap operas in the afternoon, playing casino slots at night, losing and winning in stretches, driving home in the ghost hours in a three-cylinder car his neighbor fixed from time to time.

Brigitte Bardot attends an event promoting her new film “Viva Maria.” The date handwritten on the slide is December 18, 1965. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi) Jimi Hendrix is photographed in the back seat of a car. The date handwritten on the slide is October 8, 1971. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)

When he died in 2018, Verzi was 83, alone and, according to friends, nearly broke. His nephew took his ashes to Malibu and scattered them along the ocean in a cove beyond Cher’s house.

It was a fitting send-off. Verzi had yearned to be close to the stars since he was a boy watching horror flicks with his older brother. He sought entrance into their realm, not as an interloper or opportunist, but as a man with an ingratiating air who could recite the credit lines of every working actor. He was at home along the celebrity rope line at movie premieres, knew his way around the old Ambassador Hotel, kept a careful eye on the stage door at Merv Griffin studios and took his best photographs of people like Charles Bronson and Tab Hunter at the unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Boulevard.

Charles Bronson, in shirtsleeves, stops for a photograph in a parking lot, possibly at the Hollywood unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Blvd. The date handwritten on the slide is Sept. 18, 1961.

(Jon Verzi)

He didn’t do it for money or recognition. He rarely sold a photo or a signature in what Bonhams auction house called “arguably the greatest autograph collection ever seen.” Verzi kept what he gathered in the dim sanctuary of the trailer he bequeathed in a handwritten will to Cherry Tolbert, his best friend at the Venice Post Office, where he had worked for 20 years, sorting letters, correcting ZIP Codes and rising to finance clerk.

How one woman’s obsession with a movie star led the Los Angeles Public Library to win an auction for 12,500 celebrity photographs—most of them never published.

Tolbert stood in that narrow home days after Verzi’s death, staring into rows of meticulously curated archives, the legacy of an eccentric who kept a prayer book and listened to Ben E. King and The Shirelles. She contacted Kaye, a memorabilia dealer, who sold the autographs for about $80,000 in a blind auction won by collectors David Wentink and Tom Kramer. The Los Angeles Public Library acquired the 12,500 photographs for $144,000 through a public auction last year at Bonhams.

“I’ve become obsessed with [Verzi],” said Wendy Horowitz, an archivist cataloging the pictures for the library’s photo collection. “This was his escape, and you can see on the faces of the people that a lot of them loved him. He got everyone. Movie stars. TV actors. Rock musicians. French actors. Joe Louis. Robert F. Kennedy. It’s amazing. But the historical value of this collection is the people he got who weren’t A-listers. Child actors. Obscure character actors. I mean he went to the premiere of the soft-porn ‘Flesh Gordon.’”

It was a life of getting to places fast, of tips, winks and confidences. Verzi drove a VW Beetle and traveled with cameras and colored index cards for autographs. He’d get a nod that Frank Sinatra might be in Beverly Hills having a drink or Lucille Ball was playing backgammon at Pips or Jim Morrison of the Doors had arrived at a West Hollywood theater to see “The Beard,” a play that was raided by police for a sex scene. Verzi kept tabs and followed whispers.

Lucille Ball arrives at Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills for a dinner given by Harold Mirisch honoring director Billy Wilder. The date on the slide is Sept. 10, 1961.

(Jon Verzi)

Bruce Lee attend an entertainment industry event. The date handwritten on the slide is November 26, 1966. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi) Elvis Presley sits in the backseat of his car as he leaves a movie studio lot. The date handwritten on the slide is June 7, 1962. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)

“My favorite film was ‘The Women’ from 1939,” said John Paschal, a photographer who as a teenager befriended Verzi. “John knew I loved that movie. He asked me one day to drive with him to the old folks actors home in Woodland Hills. We walked in and he had a big smile on his face.

“He said, ‘See that little old lady over there? That’s Norma Shearer. She’s in your film.’ Norma was once the queen of Hollywood. She was married to [producer] Irving Thalberg and there she was sitting in a wheelchair with dementia.”

“John knew everything about everybody in the movies,” Paschal said. “He respected that world. He lived and breathed it. ”

Verzi was a contradiction and a riddle. He was dignified but had a trigger temper. He was vain and fiercely territorial and would get depressed on days he didn’t get a picture. “He had to conquer,” Paschal said.

He was a savant who didn’t fit into the real world as easily as the make-believe one. In the 1960s, that was a refuge for a gay man who wore a magenta cape coat and appeared at the homes of aging film stars who reminisced about the times before the talkies when they glittered in black-and-white and seldom contemplated the impermanence of fame.

“He was very kind and gentle and easy to talk to, but odd, yet as a child it was a fun odd,” said Verzi’s step-niece Meagan DeHart, who recalled girlhood visits to her uncle’s West Hollywood apartment and the time she spent with him in Las Vegas years later. “He always slept on the floor. He’d drive us to the homes of famous people. I invited him to our home for Thanksgiving in 2008. He was exactly the same as when I was a child — his sweet, awkward self. A little bit on the spectrum.”

Tall and moving like a slight breeze through a window crack, Verzi had deep set eyes and thick brows. In his younger days, before the comb-overs and the hand that lifted his mouth when he smiled, he looked a bit like Christian Bale, his face as smooth as his palms. He had a cosmetology license for electrolysis and as he aged, like the stars he had photographed, he felt the urge to recall that he had once been handsome. He needed glasses but preferred a magnifying glass. A friend said he covered the mirrors in his home so he wouldn’t have to look at what the years had thieved.

Actor Tony Curtis and his wife, actress Janet Leigh, are photographed in their car as they arrive at an evening event hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher at PJ’s restaurant, 8151 Santa Monica Blvd. The slide is dated June 29, 1961.

(Jon Verzi)

But then there’d be a flash of confidence.

“Don’t I look good today?” he would say.

He was overbearing to some. Actress Sylvia Sidney was reported to say when she saw Verzi: “Get that man out of here.”

Verzi was born Jack Robin Verzi in Santa Clara County in 1934. His father, John Robert Verzi, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was the wealthy owner of hardware stores in the San Francisco area. His mother, Elizabeth, to whom he was very close, collected owl figurines and liked to drink, according to relatives. In the 1950s, Verzi studied elementary school education at Brigham Young University and moved to Hawaii to teach. He quit soon after and worked at a Honolulu hotel before moving to San Francisco and later Los Angeles in 1960.

He grew estranged from a father who was dismayed that his gay, Catholic-raised son had quit teaching and abandoned a chance at a corporate job at Chevron. “My dad pretty much wrote him off at that point,” said Verzi’s stepbrother, Melvin, who refers to himself as a gun collector and a onetime professional gambler. “Jack — I always called him Jack — had an extremely high IQ. For a long time, he wanted to change his name from Jack Robin to John Robert Verzi Jr. My dad absolutely forbid it.”

Verzi’s relationship with his father — who divorced his mother, remarried and died in 2002 — was bruising and indelible. “He’d shut down any talk of family,” said a friend. But Verzi signed his will, as if in defiance of his father, as John Robert Verzi Jr. Despite the bitterness between them, father and son shared a love of photography: “When my father died, he had 21 cameras and thousands of slides,” said Melvin. “My whole life is documented in slides.”

A glimpse of Marilyn Monroe captured by the photographer as she leaves a dinner party honoring Billy Wilder at the Beverly Hills restaurant Romanoff’s. The slide is dated Sept. 10, 1961.

(Jon Verzi)

Verzi arrived in Los Angeles when a matinee ticket to “Spartacus” cost $1.80. He copped a press pass through a friend and ventured across a city of fan magazines and scandals unfolding in a neverland of ballrooms, canyons and hushed bars where Clark Gable might wander out of a restaurant and sign autographs for a few collectors waiting by his car. Verzi photographed Sophia Loren in a fur coat and diamonds at a movie premiere; caught Marilyn Monroe — smiling as if he recognized him — leaving a dinner party honoring director Billy Wilder; and, in a candid moment in 1961, got Janet Leigh, one year after she starred in “Psycho”, powdering her nose in a car while Tony Curtis sat nonplussed in the driver’s seat.

Verzi seemed to know everybody. Through the post office, he had access to addresses, including the home of Stan Laurel, half of the 1930s Laurel and Hardy comedy team, where Verzi was invited into the living room. He was as prolific as he was bold. Over 11 months in 1960 and 1961, Verzi, who often traveled to New York and Europe and showed up at Hollywood awards shows in a tuxedo, photographed nearly 300 celebrities including Cyd Charisse, Paul Newman, Ronald Reagan, Warren Beatty and Judy Garland.

Los Angeles, California-Judy Garland, in a silk brocade evening coat, following her sold out performance at the Hollywood Bowl. The date handwritten on the slide is September 17, 1961. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi) Warren Beatty next to a car in a parking lot. The date handwritten on the slide is October 28, 1961. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)

“It wasn’t the pandemonium it is today with all the bodyguards and security,” said Parmett, owner of Celebrity Circle, a memorabilia business. “You could go out and see major stars without all these screaming crowds. What do you have now? Reality TV people with no talent showing off outlandish lifestyles, these so-called influencers. It’s very, very sad. There’s no class anymore.”

Parmett was getting into the autograph scene when he met Verzi, who was “not a particularly friendly guy,” he said, adding, “He didn’t like anyone on what he thought was his territory.” But Parmett admired Verzi for “pounding the sidewalk for decades.” If you wanted to get a signature or a photo, Parmett said, you had to be as patient and diligent as a magpie or a fisherman.

By the late 1960s, when independent filmmakers were challenging the old studio system, Verzi, who wore bell bottoms, Hawaiian shirts and loved to rollerskate, lived in West Hollywood and took a job at the post office. His camera caught the faces of change: Sharon Tate, Dennis Hopper, Mick Jagger, and into the 1970s with George C. Scott and Diana Ross and the 1980s with Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. He understood the Hollywood gaze that over time widened and grew mercenary. His collection became a private conceit, scrupulously named and dated in the penmanship of a monk, stored in boxes and metal bins like a man in a film hiding riches in the shadows.

Actor Asher Dann, photographed while exiting the state unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Blvd. His unemployment benefit card is visible in his hands, along with some cash. The slide is dated Dec. 4, 1962.

(Jon Verzi)

“He loved photographing beautiful men,” said Horowitz, pointing to a slide in her office in the Central Library downtown. “Here’s a matador. He shot valets. Bodybuilders. He loved Matt Dillon. He has a lot of shirtless pictures of John Schneider (Dukes of Hazzard).”

The collection includes no lover or partner. “I think he was pretty much in the closet until he died,” a relative said.

Paschal was in his late teens when he moved from the Valley to Hollywood, a “starstruck” kid with a camera. “John took me under his wing. I’d be at Spago or someplace and I’d call John and say, ‘Natalie Wood’s here with Laurence Olivier.’” He added: “John was much older than me. He knew I was gay. He’d speak more freely around me. ‘Oh, he’s good looking.’ But John was always respectful. He was a nice man. I’m in my 60s now, and trust me, being young and gay in the 70s I met a lot of pervies. He was not.”

“It’s a little sad, maybe,” said Paschal, who runs a studio that specializes in Hollywood and entertainment photography. “The way his life turned out.”

Verzi received a large sum of money and quit the post office in 1989. The amount, according to relatives and friends, was between $300,000 and $400,000. The source is unclear. Melvin said Verzi inherited nontaxable securities from a rich man he had befriended.

“That’s when he bought his place in Vegas,” said Paschal.

Verzi moved into a trailer at the Riviera Mobile Home Park (Space 97) east of downtown Las Vegas. He gambled at night at Club Fortune Casino and other venues beyond the glare of the Strip. He’d eat complimentary dinners and wander to the slots. “He was exacting. He knew those machines,” said his stepbrother. “His winnings for a time far outnumbered his losses.” He’d sometimes order breakfast at Blueberry Hill Family Restaurant, but he spent his days in front of a Philco TV watching soap operas amid newspapers, a Rudolph Valentino movie poster, a painting of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and laminated pictures of his casino jackpots.

Sharon Tate attends an evening event. The slide is dated March 30, 1967.

(Jon Verzi)

Los Angeles, California-Rudy Ray Moore is photographed in front of an adult movie theater in Hollywood. The handwritten date on the slide is September 28, 1975. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi) Ann Dvorak, in the backyard of her Hawaiian home. The date handwritten on the slide is October 8, 1971. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE) (Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)

“He kept his trailer dark with thick curtains so the sunlight wouldn’t bother him,” said Victoria Millett Ramirez, a friend who worked with Verzi at the post office and who, with Tolbert, would send Verzi money when his luck turned bad. “He’d say you can call me but not at such and such a time because he was watching his shows. He loved ‘The Young and the Restless’ and Judge Judy.”

John Schachtschneider lived in a nearby trailer. A union man retired from the heating and air conditioning trade, Schachtschneider would fill the tires, change the oil and repair Verzi’s Geo Metro, which replaced his VW Beetle: “He’d come home from gambling around 1 a.m. He didn’t smoke or drink. He told me he lost $750,000 gambling. Gamblers are used to ups and downs. He kept to himself. Friends?” He laughed. “Me. He left me his car when he died. I cleaned it up and got 900 bucks for it.”

Verzi never showed Schachtschneider his autographs or photographs. “I had no idea,” he said. “He liked looking stuff up on the internet. He looked up stuff about me. He found my dad’s name and other stuff I didn’t even know about me.”

In 2006, Verzi contacted a distant cousin, Shawn Doyle, a genealogist and a former nuclear plant security guard from Oswego County, N.Y. Verzi had years earlier made trips to Europe to trace his ancestry and was intent on exploring his maternal grandmother’s side of the family, which hailed from Glencolumbkille, a village in County Donegal on the west coast of Ireland. Doyle said Verzi was an exacting researcher who wrote emails — many in the early morning hours — the way people once wrote letters.

Aretha Franklin attends an industry luncheon. The slide is dated March 5, 1973.

(Jon Verzi)

“John had gone to Ireland many years before. He took pictures of thatched cottages and these aged people,” said Doyle. “He got stories from them. He took Kodachrome color slides. They would talk about this relative from California who drove a nice rental car and wore good clothes.”

The email exchanges between Doyle and Verzi — who wrote in caps — reminisced about ancestors going back to the 1800s. Other times, Verzi would share a personal note: “I fell asleep listening to 1920s jazz music. Now, I’m starving! I will get cleaned up, go out into the windy night, dine & gamble. Till tomorrow … John.”

By then, much of Verzi’s life was the solitary unraveling of the past — even his boyhood when he and his brother, Jerry, watched horror films and collected biographies of stars. Jerry, who joined the Air Force and died in 1996, resented his brother for being gay. Verzi escaped such intolerance and travails by listening to Brenda Lee or Bobby Darin. The real world, though, often intruded. On Dec. 30, 2013, Verzi, who collected a post office pension and social security, posted on Facebook: “Pay off my debts!”

Brad Pitt attends an evening event. February, 1988.

(Jon Verzi)

For a man who took thousands of pictures, Verzi posted only three on his Facebook page. A white wooden fence running along rose pink blooms. A black-and-white portrait from his youth. And another portrait tinted in amber, his hair combed forward, his eyes fixed on the lens. Posted three years before his death, the photograph is of a man decades younger, an image one hopes will survive, like the line from a Paul Simon song: “A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph. Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you.”

“I think he had a tough life,” said Tolbert’s daughter, Tina. “But he never sold any of his photographs or autographs. They were precious to him. That’s heartbreaking to me. He’d go to the casinos and the cheap cafes. He was struggling at the end. He’d go without air conditioning to save money. My mom would cut his hair. Her heart went out to him over what happened with his family.”

Verzi’s autograph collection alone, according to collector David Wentink, might have gone for hundreds of thousands of dollars if Verzi had broken it up and sold it in pieces. A rare autograph of Al Lettieri, a character actor who appeared in “The Godfather,” was worth about $7,500, Wentink said. Collectors like Verzi, he added, “could change their lives in days or weeks but they just can’t let go. The pain of giving up something is more powerful than the rewards they might receive.”

Verzi’s nephew, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, said his uncle “was happy going to the casinos and gambling all night. He had friends all over the country. He never seemed down. He was a simple man. He’d say, ‘Never take me to the Strip.’ He hated it there. He loved the little life on the opposite side of town.”

Verzi was pronounced dead in his trailer at 11:25 p.m. on May 18, 2018. The cause was complications from hypertensive heart disease. Cherry Tolbert had not heard from him in days. The police were called and Tolbert, who had the will, arrived a day or two later, followed by Verzi’s nephew. “I took some of his record collection and a Shirley Temple and a John Wayne autograph,” the nephew said. “I didn’t take the slides. I thought, ‘Nobody looks at slides anymore.’”

In the following weeks, Tolbert and Ramirez went through the trailer, collecting shoe boxes of autographs and metal bins of slides, including those of about 200 French actors and pop singers, which Verzi kept in a cabinet by the refrigerator. Tolbert was left everything, including rosaries, a prayer book and a picture of a child who appeared as if a ghost in an old frame. Verzi asked in the will that she make a “generous gift” to the Shriners Hospitals for Children “in my name and that of my mother.”

Tolbert didn’t know the value of the pictures and autographs. She contacted David Kaye, who owns a bookstore in Woodland Hills and has been dealing in memorabilia for nearly half a century. Her inquiry led Kaye to immerse himself in a stranger’s painstaking obsession.

“You’re always skeptical when you get a call like that. ‘Oh, my relative died and I’ve got a great collection,’ said Kaye. “But I don’t dismiss anyone. Cherry sounded like a nice lady. She wasn’t overselling.”

Tolbert emailed photos of the autographs to Kaye. “I see Grace Kelly. Very rare. Humphrey Bogart. Very, very rare. I see Bobby Kennedy. This is intriguing. I got into my SUV and drove to the trailer.” Kaye spent months going through the collection. The autographs were sold in bulk to Wentink and Kramer; many are now for sale on eBay for $15 to $25, including some by a dealer who goes by “brucelovestheocean.”

The photographs will become part of the library’s permanent collection. Before Tolbert died in January, Tina said her mother donated money to Shriners in the name of Verzi and his mother. The amount was not known.

“He probably dedicated every spare moment of his life to this,” said Kaye. “He was my most unique find.”

One of Verzi’s pictures shows him sitting next to Jane Wyman, a 1950s movie star and former wife of Ronald Reagan. She is wearing a blue embroidered dress with a pearl necklace and red lipstick. She and Verzi, dressed in a pinstripe collar shirt, are holding open a book with a black-and-white portrait of a much younger Wyman, eyebrows arched, hand to her face, bracelet on wrist; her past a splendid, vanishing vapor against the present.

Verzi looks toward the camera. He is there but he knows his place, as if a bird content to peer from a branch into the garden.

Professional photographers and would-be photographers will have the opportunity to take a picture of the first blue supermoon of the year on Wednesday night, which is also the last one until 2037.

Before people whip out their cellphones, or better yet, their fancy DSLRs, to take a picture of this rare blue supermoon, they should know exactly what they’re trying to capture.

The moon will be what NASA calls a “trifecta of labels,” as it will be a full moon, a supermoon and a blue moon.

A blue moon refers to the second time a full moon appears during the same month, according to NASA. A supermoon is when it is at the closest point in its orbit around the Earth.

The best camera to use

While people will be tempted to pull out their iPhones or Android devices to take pictures of the blue supermoon, the best camera to photograph Earth’s neighboring celestial body is a mirrorless camera, or a DSLR, according to ABC News’ Deputy Photo Director Gary Hershorn.

“The easiest way to photograph the moon is not with a telephone [camera] but with a real camera, where you can control the exposure of your camera a lot easier than you can with your mobile phone,” Hershorn said. “The difference between a camera and a mobile phone is that the mobile phone doesn’t let you zoom that much. So, however you photograph it, it’s going to be very small.”

The moon will begin to rise in the sky 15 minutes after sunset on Wednesday, at approximately 7:31 p.m. ET and will be in the night’s sky by 7:46 p.m. ET.

Trying to capture a clear photo of the moon against the dark sky is particularly difficult since cameras tend to photograph it as a white dot, Hershorn said.

A camera with a telephoto lens between 200 millimeters and 600 millimeters would be a person’s best bet to capture a photo of the blue supermoon.

You can still use a smartphone

Despite DSLRs, mirrorless cameras and even point-and-shoot cameras being better devices to take a picture of the blue supermoon than the camera on your smartphone, people can still use their smartphones to capture a good shot – as long as they are willing to tinker with the camera settings, according to Hershorn.

“All the mobile phones have an exposure compensation setting,” he said. “It’s really important that people use that exposure compensation slider to try to get the moon in a way that isn’t way overexposed.”

Going the distance

Most people trying to photograph the moon tend to aim the cameras on their phones at the sky and take a picture. However, being a few miles away from a particular location and finding an object to shoot the moon alongside is the best way to get a great picture, according to Hershorn.

“It’s really important for people to place the moon in a way it identifies where you are,” Hershorn said.

Hershorn also suggests deciding if you want to take a wide-angle photograph that would show a city’s skyline or something else because it gives scale to the size of the moon.

For example, someone living in New York City planning to take a photo of the blue supermoon should consider photographing it alongside a landmark like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building or One World Trade Center.

If a person isn’t around any landmarks, they can use trees, cactuses or even a lighthouse if it’s something that makes it clear where they are, Hershorn said.

Lights! Camera! Action!

When taking a photo of the blue supermoon you should know the right time to snap your lens, which is when the moon is as low to the horizon as possible, according to Hershorn.

The closer the moon is to the horizon, the darker it’ll be, Hershorn said, adding that the moon gets brighter as it rises.

“Every minute that it rises above the horizon, it gets brighter to a camera, and you’re more than likely at that point to have a picture of a white circle rather than an orange ball,” Hershorn said, adding that it’s like a photo of the sun, which looks orange the closer it is to the horizon.

Hershorn said that despite being able to observe the moon with your eyes, it is an extremely bright object in the night sky and that it’s easier to take a picture of it when it’s low in the sky because it’s darker.

“Cameras prefer the moon when it is darker than when it’s lighter,” Hershorn said.

ABC News’ Yi-Jin Yu contributed to this report.