This is the photo that began it all, or–to borrow freely from the Greek poet Homer–the face that launched a million clicks.
I am not going to tell you this is my best photo. It isn’t. Nor am I going to say it is even contest worthy. Not a chance. However, it IS the photo that changed the course of my life, because it was the first, and, until I clicked the shutter; until I processed the Kodachrome and threw it into a projector for friends and family to see, I was struggling to find my place in the world– As a mechanical engineer.
Pretty exciting, I know. Until then, I was like
many of you, I merely enjoyed photography as a fun escape. However, when I my camera and I encountered his little girl, I had some tough things I was dealing with in my life.
You see, from the age of six, I knew what I wanted to be: an astronaut. I was going to go to the Air Force Academy, excel in math and science, wow my instructors with my flight skills, and get in the seat of every fighter plane available to me. Then, it was off to NASA, where I would train like I never trained before and get selected to the first manned Mars mission. That was pretty much it. Major Tom, the subject of two space wandering songs, was my theme. Parts of the movie, The Right Stuff were filmed in the house my dad grew up in at Edward's Air Force Base. I came from two previous generations of pilots in the family, I could define what plane was is the air simply by hearing its engines. It was destiny.
That’s about when life happened.
My grades were top notch, my drive was focused, my interviewers love me, I had the brass ring in my sights, but, I got shot down by a flight surgeon–Amblyopia–lazy eye. No depth perception. No pilot seat.
What? I had records in high school hurdles, I was a corner back in football, what do you mean no depth perception? I can still hear the flight surgeon when he told me,”You see, Mr. Trimble, the trouble might come up in a tight formation at Mach speeds, or trying to land 30 feet above the tarmac.”
“Well,” I said in my wisecracking 18 year-old way, “isn’t that better than 30 feet below it?”
He wasn’t amused. I tried again a year later after entering UNC-Charlotte for engineering and tried again. Grounded again, and that was it.
About this time my grandparents were preparing to go on a month long trip overseas to Indonesia, Jakarta, Malaysia and Thailand. The knew how depressed I was and wanted to share the experience of their trip so they invited me along. My grand dad, a retired test pilot and photo reconnaissance pilot, fueled my passion for flying as a kid by sneaking me into the air in a Cessna against my mother’s wishes to teach me landings and takeoffs, he now had it in mind to supplant my shattered dream with something else, and it took the form of a Pentax K 1000.
In my hands, matched to the very eyes that betrayed me, I discovered a tool to vent my grief. That tool introduced me to a strange and beautiful culture. Despite knowing little about aperture, shutter speed, Rule of Thirds, I used my camera to seek out things I had never seen, filling a huge hole in me that was satiated by my new found ability.
I wandered into villages in Malaysia and spoke with the villagers while they were washing their laundry in the river. I photographed a barber giving a beard trim in the doorway of his shop in Singapore’s Muslim district, and in Bali, I met a girl selling bananas.
I was walking down from a temple with my grandmother when this tiny child was standing in the pathway spinning around whispering over and over again “one dollar” to tourists as they passed. I smiled and said hello and kept walking when the image of her eyes as she held the bananas to her face stuck with me as we walked away. I spun around and held her in the cross hairs as she turned towards me and clicked. It was as if something magical literally guided my arms and possessed me. I walked away imagining how great I hoped the photo would be. It would be eight weeks later when I would be back home and eight boxes of magic slides would arrive from the developer.
The thing I heard most from those who looked at the images, especially the image of the little banana girl was “You should work for National Geographic!” That was it. Suddenly, everything started to click. The right
side of my brain buzzed with creative possibilities, the logical left side let go of its dominance. A semester went by, and my hard science engineering degree fell away and I transferred to Arizona State to pursue photojournalism.
I have shot several amazing photos over the last 20 years since that magical tropical adventure. I traveled to several parts of the world, and experienced many touching stories through my camera and the skills I built to amaze those who viewed them, but nothing like taking that photo. That untempered, electric feeling that happened when I saw beyond the subject of just that girl, and saw the life happening in her eyes and acted to capture it.
Like I said, it wasn’t my best photo. I could probably list 15 things that would keep it from winning a contest, but to me, It holds a top spot in my life. It made me a photographer.
