My first photograph December 17, 2007 12:17
The cool thing about going through old pictures is you can find treasure. This is the first photograph I ever took. Notice the low angle. It was using a Rolleiflex, so I was looking down into a viewfinder where everything is backwards. If you've ever used one, it's very disorienting. It's a wonder it's as straight as it is.
The other thing worth noting is my Dad's expression - you can tell he's in the midst of telling me how to take the picture, so he's not as relaxed as Frank, my brother. This is a theme in my photographs of today. If the picture was shot with my own camera, and I'm in the picture, then I'm most likely stressing about how the person using my camera is using my camera, and I'll be the only person in the picture who's not having any fun. This photograph is tilted because at the moment I snapped the shutter, a Shriner hit me with his tiny car. At first it seemed weird that he was all the way out in the desert, but then he explained he had just robbed a bank and was heading back to his hideout.
He was lying, of course. He and the javelina in the passenger seat had clearly been drinking.
PS. I'm pretty sure this was the infamous car that had a rattle somewhere on the port side. In those carefree days before seat belts were standard issue, my brother and I would crawl around the inside of the car trying to locate where it was coming from, while Dad drove around. I seem to remember a sunny afternoon playing on the front lawn while Dad took apart the doors.