Old Man And Statue – Birthday Special

“Old Man and Statue,” Paris, 2001.

This was taken not long after I started photographing. After a long, fruitless day of shooting, I found myself standing literally with my back against the wall of the Louvre Museum. I knew I hadn’t taken a good photo all day and was counting in my head how much each frame would cost me to develop from all the rolls of film I’d shot. This started a downward spiral of negative thinking—I can’t afford this hobby, what made me think I could do this well, maybe I should stick to acting, etc., etc. Just as my mood was turning black, this elderly man in a suit walked directly in front of me with his arms echoing the gesture of the statue he was walking towards. This jolted me out of my funk and while I was thanking the photo gods I got three frames off before he was gone. I learned an invaluable lesson that day—in street photography, failure is part of the process. If you can get comfortable with that idea, you’ll stick with it long enough to succeed.