Hey, what’s the big idea? We have all heard this expression, usually of course of it is more of an exclamation we make when someone does something to us that we do not like. However, in my life, I have had much time to come up with all kinds of big ideas, so now I decided it is time to share at least one (maybe several) of these ideas.

By way of introduction, I just wanted to mention that my father, Donald Sanders (he should rest in peace) was always talking about business ideas with his brother (my uncle) Harvey Sanders (he should rest in peace).

Now I used to be lucky enough to listen to so many of these various schemes. I got the idea that the two of them really enjoyed thoroughly discussing the idea from every conceivable angle. However no matter how great the idea may have seemed upon its initial introduction, usually by the end of the discussion, it was decided, that one simply could not make any money with it.

Now I could also tell you that it was usually one person, typically my uncle, who believed in the idea, while it was my father Donald, the eternal pragmatist, who usually had a ready made arsenal of reasons conveniently at his disposal ready to shoot down the idea, as most as quickly as it could be expressed. Now I have to tell you that on some level this process was like a well choreographed song and dance routine. Everyone knew their lines, and the appropriate gestures.

One time I developed this idea that I would photograph kids playing soccer at the park with a telephoto lens (I was in my mid teens at the time, an avid photographer with Nikons and extra lenses) and come back and later try to sell the photos to the parents of the kids. When I told my Dad this idea, he came back with a pad of paper which had:

From the Desk of Don Sanders

written on the top, with a little drawing of a pen and paper. My father then went through a series of questions mainly concerning costs, and proceeded to start a little tally:

Cost of film………………$3.35

Cost of developer………$4.58   (good for 15 rolls of flim)

Photographic Paper…….$12.65 (for 100 4×5 sheets)

Etc…………………….

As you may have already guessed, by the time we got around to what I would charge the parents (it was something around five or seven dollars, my father had figured out that there was no way to make a profit.

It may have been the capitol outlay required to by the telephoto lens, that doomed the entire business plan to failure. However I was planning on buying a 200mm f 4.0 Nikkor telephoto lens anyway. The lens I really wanted was the 180mm 2.8, because the extra wideness of its maximum aperture was a great help when shooting pictures in low light, which was what I was aways dealing with when photographing rock concerts. So, lets just say, I did not bother ever going to weekend soccer games to take live action photographs of the kids at play and then try to sell them them to their parents the following week.

Lets move a little further forward in my life, to a time where I was graduating Santa Monica College. My uncle Harvey, perhaps sensing correctly that I needed to develop a new focus (pun intentional), now that was about to graduate had a few suggestions for me. One of them was that Santa Monica College had a special program in conjunction with UCLA Hospital where one could be trained to become a respiratory therapist. He had actually told me this idea a year prior to my graduation, because I did follow his suggestion, and took the prerequisite: Human Anatomy, Human Physiology, Microbiology, and Organic Chemistry classes which were required courses before taking classes along with clinical in service training at UCLA Hospital. Without getting into too much greater detail, lets just say for the record, that the program was maybe about 25% of what you would have to accomplish if one were to go to medical school.

Another suggestion my uncle Harvey had for me was to go into the army, which I of course immediately rejected. Another thing that Harvey provided me with was cassette tape that I could listen to in my car about goal setting from Napoleon Hill, an author perhaps best know for his book: “Think and Grow Rich”.

Now my uncle Harvey, was a great guy. He really went out of his way to help me and give me ideas, and to be there for me.

(This Wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get)  Graphical User Interface, is not allowing me to place text below Harvey’s Picture, so I will continue this post in part II).

Aharon Moshe (Stephen) Sanders, October, 25, 2009…Big Idea (Part I)

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