Kevin Thom - Hamilton, Toronto, Ontario Photographer

My Mountain Man portrait of actor Ron Kebic has been one of my favorite photos in my portfolio since I shot it two years ago. I still grin whenever I see this wild looking character staring back at me.

When Ron contacted me in September to ask if I’d like to do some more photos before he cut off all of his hair, I jumped at the chance. I knew this was an opportunity to do something really fun. I proposed that we do a Mountain Man Makeover. I would take Ron to my barber, cut off half of his hair, and do bizarre portrait like that. Ron was game for it, and was good enough to wait for me to return from China so we could set everything up.

We shot these portraits today. When Ron showed up at my door, I was shocked to see that his hair and beard were even wilder than they were last time I saw him. I started by doing some “before” photos to commemorate the four years that Ron spent growing this crazy mane. To me, there’s no point in doing the exact same thing twice, so I tried to get some different emotional content into these shots.

Then, it was time to head to my local barber shop, Gus & Son. Lou (the “son”) was tasked with returning the Mountain Man to civilization, 50% at a time. Gus was amazed at the amount of hair that came off of Ron’s head during this half of the procedure. When your hair can impress a barber who’s been cutting hair for over 50 years, that’s really saying something.

After the half-cut, we headed back to the studio to play with the new look. Being that photos read from left to right, I had originally thought I wanted to shave the left side of Ron’s head first, so it would be like a transformation from wild to civilized. However, I remembered that Ron’s left eyebrow is the one that raises, so I opted to go for the right side instead. Although his 50% look was clearly ridiculous–especially in broad daylight walking down the street–it was important to me for the photos to come across more mystical or mysterious rather than funny. I wonder if I achieved that?

Finally, we returned to Gus and Lou to finish up Ron’s new look, complete with an old-fashioned straight-razor shave and a hot towel treatment.

As we walked out of the barber shop, Ron was marveling at the feel of the new cut, and reminisced about how women used to cross the street to avoid him at night. “Welcome to anonymity,” I told him.

I went to bed around 8:30 last night, and woke up fully refreshed at 4 in the morning. So, I figured I’d make a little walk down to the Bund to try to catch the sunrise over Pudong’s spectacular futuristic skyline. The only problem is, there was no way to access the boardwalk area that would have given me a view of the river and the skyline. There are billboards up everywhere proclaiming the improvements that are coming in time for the world expo that Shanghai is hosting in 2010. One such improvement is a comlete demolition and rebuilding of that waterfront area. Unfortunately, that means that there’s no access to it.

Dad and I spent the next four hours wandering around the old part of the city, including a park filled with seniors exercising, swinging their arms in vigorous calesthenics, and repeatedly slapping circulation into their skinny legs. There was a group of them grooving to pulsing dance music too. Fun.

We returned to the hostel by about 10am, feeling like we’d already had a full day.

One thing that’s new since I was here last is that many more sites seem to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Facebook and Twitter are both verboten. Oddly, I can still get on Twitpic.