Mark Lyn­der­say

When I took this pho­to­graph in a small meet­ing room at the Trinidad Hilton, I'd been tak­ing pho­tographs for just a cou­ple of years, most­ly snap­shots to ac­com­pa­ny my first sto­ries for the press. I'd man­aged to get in­to it through my cousin Al­fred Agui­ton, whose PR firm AM­PLE was han­dling the press re­la­tions for the Jack­sons vis­it to T&T.

Michael Jack­son had al­ready had one en­tire ca­reer by then, and was on the verge of launch­ing an­oth­er, steer­ing clear of his broth­ers and Epic Records to chart his own path as a so­lo artist.

Janelle "Pen­ny" Com­mis­siong, fresh­ly crowned Miss Uni­verse, was stay­ing at the ho­tel and was in­vit­ed down to meet the per­form­ers.

So for around a half an hour, the most beau­ti­ful woman in the uni­verse, the King of Pop and I were all in the same room and I was the on­ly one with a cam­era.

The re­sult­ing pho­tographs changed my life, and I be­came known as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er af­ter that. I wrote a sto­ry about the Jack­sons' vis­it for Owen Bap­tiste's Peo­ple Mag­a­zine, learned some hard lessons about ne­go­ti­at­ing for the val­ue of my pho­tographs from the Epic Records PR team and for the first time, my pho­tographs were pub­lished in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

I still have the neg­a­tives from that shoot, along with all the pos­i­tives.