This is my all time favorite personal photo. It shouts to me of the human condition …joy and hope, as well as quiet desperation. This Web version does not do it justice. Much of its charm is in the subtle highlight and shadow details. (scanned with Umax1200S)

It was shot almost 30 years ago using a Nikormat on Black and White Tri-X film. I knew absolutely nothing about the mechanics of photography at that time. It’s grainy and it was a nightmare to print. At various times I’ve mused “what if”. What if I’d had Plus X in the camera, what if I’d had T-Max 100 and an appropriate developer, what if I’d been using 2.25x2.25…and now…what if I’d had a Canon 1Ds and an Epson 2200 printer? The real lesson here is we use what we have, buy the best we can afford and continue to learn.

After 33 years of teaching art...most recently B&W photography and computer graphics, I've donated my Omega D6 and "stuff" to the school and left the wet lab as a footnote to my past. My next purchase will be an Epson 3200 flatbed scanner as a replacement for my old SCSI Umax 1200S. It will allow me to resurrect some of my old pictures digitally, both as a traditional flatbed and as a film scanner.

Here is a much larger 3MB .jpeg file of the same image