Dell Deaton

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Tag: entrepreneurship

Automotive News World Expo ’84

Late-August 1984, one of the earliest forays into photojournalism via wire services under the D² Enterprises moniker came through our coverage of the Automotive News World Expo. My partner and I had filed business papers almost exactly one year prior when we were granted press credentials to cover this exhibition.

Like too much of the history of our nascent efforts, most of the photography that we produced was sent off as undeveloped film still in the canisters, as quickly as practical. At base I should suppose that rather intuitive, insofar as “news” rapidly having become less so as the passage of time increased. Just as importantly, we recognized even in those days that repeat business became more likely as our reputation for “fast” took root.

It also meant that we received payment for those jobs sooner.

Earlier today I revisited Automotive News Expo ’84 in Saline Journal through a feature article titled, “Saline Has Been Providing Auto Show Content for Decades” under my own byline.

Cadillac and LaSalle Museum construction documentary

Through D² Enterprises brand “d2 Originals,” I scripted, filmed, and produced a documentary on the Cadillac-LaSalle Club Museum and Research Center construction: From September 2013 groundbreaking through completion twelve months later.

On September 24, mLive used this production as part of its own coverage focused on the opening at Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan, just outside of Kalamazoo. The video produced by my wife and me also features on the Museum website as part of its “Building History” page.

When I was D² Enterprises

via Internet Archive—

A partner and I started D² Enterprises on August 12, 1983. One of our first major clients was the University of Michigan Panhellenic Association.

They hired us to produce marketing materials and do some re-imaging work.

The impetus for D² Enterprises actually came a year earlier. I was freelancing for a business contracted to photograph sorority rushes. Our contract called for me to be paid for every “salable” image I took, shooting 35mm film with my own camera over the course of six hours or so.

As an aside, I knew an advisor to the program and some of the women independently through a local theater group. They were very pleased with my results, and, based on the orders they shared with me, I anticipated a rather sizeable check from the firm for which I’d done photography.

So I was floored when [the business man’s] calculations yielded a payment for less than a third of that. He explained that “salable” was a term subject solely to his interpretation, and that nowhere in our contract did it say that salable was related to actual sales.

In other words, just because an image had, indeed, sold, well — that didn’t mean it was salable. “I don’t care what you think,” he said without further explanation. “If you don’t like it, go start your own business.”

And I did just that. No hard feelings. Within five years, this photograph guy was gone, D² Enterprises had become D² Corporation, and I’d bought-out my former partner ….

— accessed February 9, 2026