Ever had a day when you woke up and everything was just right?  Welcome to my morning today.

I can’t help but feel that a great day’s start is often dependent on the events of the previous day.  It’s sort of like an appetizer at a great restaurant setting you up for the main course.   Well, yesterday at a memorial service for the mother of a an old friend of Sheila’s I had a chance to talk to one of my teachers from high school, Mr. Stanley.  It’s funny that no matter how old I get,  it’s uncomfortable to call any teacher by their first name.  I hadn’t seen him in 43 years!

In any event, what makes Mr. Stanley so important is he ran the photo service club my senior year.  He was pretty much responsible for getting me started in what would wind up as a career.  Sitting next to him yesterday was Mr. Burris, the art teacher, who if you consider a yearbook a publication, published my first images.   

There are no deep thoughts this morning, just me enjoying the blog and thinking about the irony of how I got into photography.  I never anticipated it as a career in high school.  It was a hobby with benefits.  You got to go to all the games and be on the side line as a photographer.  Your images were shown throughout the year at various events.  And here’s a big one that no high school kid can relate to today – you got to work in the darkroom and appreciate the magic of watching a print develop in a tray of developer!  (Okay, I’m feeling older than dirt again – but what an incredible foundation in imaging!)

I remember looking at all the photo magazines and wondering what it would be like to hold a Hasselblad!  Who would have thought I’d have a warehouse full of them twenty years later!  Or, reading stories about famous photographers and wishing some day I could meet them and then thinking, “Come on Skip, you live in Painesville, Ohio and your mother won’t let you go to New York!”

I had really forgotten what geeks we all were, but as the picture below shows, it was a few years before our head size caught up to our ears!  

So, this morning’s post is dedicated to all the photo teachers in the world and a thank you!  You guys are the hidden heroes behind so many careers in photography.  You believed in us no matter how mundane our work was.  You supported us even when our images were less than stellar.  You smiled and encouraged us even when we took the shortcuts. (I had the biggest collection of yellow prints in the world because I was always in a rush to dry and hang my prints!

Take a minute today and think about it…who gave you your first inspiration to get into photography?

yearbook_2

If nothing else give me a points for sharing a shot from High School – that’s me in the bottom left.  And a bold and gutsy move to have a pen in my pocket without my pocket protector!