Really, my favorite thing about this picture is that my high school photography teacher, Pat Dixon (whose website features his own version of the exact same photo), was in Ireland and we got to go out taking pictures together, nigh unto twenty years after I’d first been his student. He was possibly my favorite teacher, and one of the shapers of my life. He’s the one who gave me ILLUSIONS to read when I was sixteen and having a particularly bad day (I’d lost a ring that had been a gift from someone I loved, and something else–either Lt Tasha Yar or Catherine Chandler had died, and whichever one it was, despite knowing it was silly to be upset over the death of a fictional character, well, it was a bad day.). Dixon told me to open the book and start reading wherever I opened it, and that I could go back and start from the beginning after that. This is the quote I opened to:
“Perspective—use it or lose it. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.”
It seemed so amazingly apropos that I’ve never forgotten it. I mean, okay, yes, I was sixteen and dramatic, but still, I love that quote, and it’s one of the many thigns I love Dixon for, too. He also taught us (protesting mightily that he had done this long before Dead Poet’s Society) to get up on a desk or under a chair to get a different perspective on the world as photographers. It was to the photo lab I retreated on the incredibly rare occasions I cut class (not easy to do when your dad’s a teacher!), and there are songs that to this day make me think of the scent and color of the darkroom (vice versa, too: those scents and colors bring particular music to mind.). In fact, the only song at the Aerosmith concert a few years ago that I wished they’d performed was Janie’s Got A Gun, for just that reason.
So anyway, I like this picture, but for reasons that go far beyond its actual worth. :)