One of life's rare, proud and also silly moments occurred this morning: I opened the New York Times and there, for the first time in thirty or forty years, was my byline--a photo credit, actually. What pleasure. For an hour or so I was full of myself. To understand one must go back to my beginnings. I started off as a Times stringer in Europe, no guarantees but $50 for every article that got into the paper. My editor told me to get a camera, they would pay $15 extra for any photo they used. I had a wife and two tiny kids, and $15 on top of $50 was big money to us that year. So I did get a camera, learned to take pictures, and the paper began to publish them above or beside my articles, several hundred over the next six or seven years. My photos began to appear in magazines too, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, The Saturday Evening Post. I had a cover on Newsweek once. I published three photo books and a number of my photos even hung on museum walls along side photos by real photographers. In time I left Europe, left the paper, put the cameras in a drawer and never looked at them again. I don't know why exactly. Probably because I was writing novels now, and they were part of another life and world. The picture published today, taken about 1964, went with the obituary of Jack Brabham, formerly a famous racing driver, dead at 88. Recognizing it I felt a moment of sadness for Brabham, and then was pleased for myself. My next emotion was even stronger--I wondered if the Times would send me a check for $15, or whatever the going rate is these days. It's not something I can ask for, but if they did it might make me feel more--more what exactly? Best not to examine such emotions too closely. Too often they turn out to be asinine.
4 Comments
7/22/2014 05:49:10 pm
I'm definitely enjoying the information.
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8/6/2014 09:50:37 pm
I personally liked going through your solid points on this topic.
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4/29/2018 12:39:24 am
Everyday is always a chance for to us to experience both bad and good thing. We are all bound to have good and bad days, so it would be ideal to accept these things and bear with it. Please remember that we wouldn't know how good day feels like if we have never been to bad ones, so be thankful for getting both worlds one at a time. I had fun reading this post! it just proves that you're a one typical person who is so proud of himself!
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