Smoker

At some point in our lives we've all thought about becoming "real" photographers. I was twenty-two, a passionate amateur with a college graduation gift Nikon FTN, when I saw this old man, sitting on a bench near the bocce ball courts by San Francisco Bay. I measured the light on my hands, set the focus at about 2', whirled and shot this image on Kodachrome 25. Surprised and disappointed, he unleashed a torrent of expletives at me that forced an immediate retreat. Several days later when I picked up my slides, I was delighted with this image, and I thought to myself at that time, "I wonder if I could ever make a living at photography". It was ten years after that before I had enough nerve to try, and I've never turned back. I entered this photo in Digital Photography Review's "Formal Composition: Portrait" and received a 7th place among the 150 entries. Hey, I think it's even better than that.