Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/595716
O ddly enough, photography wasn't Mark Sennet's first career choice. This boy from Great Neck, Long Island, ( "the Jewish bagel capital of the world," he jokes) wanted to be a cowboy. "I found out it was a lot of work and didn't pay well," he recalls. After trying a stint as a radio announcer and DJ, Sennet took some classes at the New York Institute of Photography and start- ed shooting weddings to pay the bills in between freelance photojour- nalism work. He got his big break when he was on the scene when Mob boss Joe Colombo was gunned down in New York. Beginning in the early 1970s, Sennet was a top photographer for Time Life, London's Daily Express and other publications. After a couple of decades, he'd had enough. "I told my wife, 'I can't stand loading up the truck, photographing celebrities and being told what to do creatively,'" Sennet says. "I felt stuck and that I had so much more to give as a storyteller." He embarked on his current career as a film and television producer. "I started hiring the celebrities I had previously photographed," he laughs. "Actually, I fell in love with Hollywood the first time I stepped off the plane." These days, he typically has between five and 10 projects in various stages of production, including shows for HBO and Spike TV. "In this business," the producer laughs, "you just hope to get all your movies made before you're dead." Sennet now lives in Los Angeles but spends a great deal of time in Carmel with his mother, Edith. MUHAMMAD ALI "My relationship with Ali was very close when he was training for Super Fight 2 with Joe Frazier in 1974. He had just gotten these two German Shepherds. He'd put on that big glove and look at them like they were Frazier, whom he disliked intensely, yelling at the dog: 'Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier!' "When you capture the essence of your subject in one frame, it's electrifying…I jump up and down when that hap- pens. 'I f 'ing got it!' Anyone can make a picture with an iPhone, but not everyone can take a photograph." C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 5 127