Moment of Clarity

One of my favorite movie one-liners is from Pulp Fiction when Jules Winfield (Samuel L Jackson) telling Vincent Vega (John Travolta) that he was “replaying the incident in my head and I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.  Travolta drops an F-bomb and turns away in disgust.

This situation is not quite the same but in hindsight was a moment of clarity for me.  My interest in photography grew out of the printing business.  Formal training included Management at Northeastern and graphic design, advertising and photography at the Art Institute of Boston. The colleges had a relationship and course credits worked in both.

What’s photography without a photo shoot?  We went to the Faneuil Hall Market one night to shoot the sights and people watch.  While there I met someone.  She asked me to take some photos of her and we decided to have a beer and bite.   Or course the teacher walks by and who gets the dirty look. What he missed was this walk-up guy who started singing at the piano bar. So, I whipped out the 35mm.

This was in the early 1980’s and everything was film.  We had a week to develop and print.  The next class the photos were tacked to the wall for a class review.  Intent was we would learn from each other, so everything was without names.  Consistent with the anonymous policy and without mentioning names he called me out as “some of us” who didn’t take the assignment seriously.

So, he leads the class around the photo wall and gets to my images. He focused on this one and started praising it as someone who got the assignment, and it was a great shot.  We had the option of identifying ourselves and he asked who shot it.  When I humbly raised my hand, he was dumb found.  A moment of clarity and I was hooked!!

The story is with respect as the teacher passed away awhile back.

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