William Eggleston, 69, is a 'cool guy.' That's according to no less an authority than Dennis Hopper, who met the photographer years ago through a mutual art-world friend. The actor probably meant it as both a measure of hipness and temperament. Even as a teenager, Eggleston was different from his peers, favoring natty suits over the James Dean style of the day. Married since 1964 to his high-school sweetheart, Rosa, the artist is known for having -- and Rosa for tolerating -- a succession of attractive female companions. (Eggleston typically himself refers to them, more straightforwardly, as his girlfriends.) Fond of a drink every now and then, and no stranger to the drug culture of the 1960s and '70s, Eggleston has proven himself to be, at the same time, a prolific workhorse, producing, by his own estimation, more than 250,000 pictures in an almost 50-year career. That he rarely wastes more than a single frame of film on a subject says a lot about his precision and speed, two qualities that Eggleston has suggested may have something to do with another of his creative outlets: playing the piano. -- 