Some of the
most memorable incidents that have happened to me in photojournalism have
nothing to do with reporting or photography.
Many years
ago I was covering the Moritz Basketball Classic and dozens of high school teams
were converging on all the gyms of an area campus. A typical occurrence when
you are carrying a bigass camera in a school is to hear “Hey, take my picture!”
from some of the little kids. I usually at least quickly pretend to take a picture so as to not disappoint the
youngsters, but one round face kid with a big grin kept showing up wherever
I went that day. I believe he was the son of one of the volunteers because when
I went from the high school gyms to the middle school gyms a few blocks
away he would be there playing in the lobby or laying upside-down in the
bleachers, “Hey man, take my picture!” It got to be a joke all day
to see who could say it first.
When I had
to do other stories on the campuses I would occasionally see him in middle school and
later in high school and we would give each other a smile and a “Hey! Take my
picture!” as we saw each other. I did not know his name and it was just “Hey! Take
my picture!” for years.
Fast forward
more years and I am getting out of my truck at a store and I hear this deep
voice, “Hey, man. Take my picture,” behind me. I turned around to see this same
round face leaning out the window of a pickup. It was Dan
Pennington, the “Hey, man!” kid. We talked for a while about work he was doing
with area kids and it sounded interesting enough to finally take his picture
and do a story about him in the paper.
 |
| Hey, Dan. Take our picture! |
Fast-forward
even more years to last week. I was hanging out on a couch in a church and I hear (drum roll) “Hey man…..” Yes, it is Dan Pennington again, and he
attends the church where I work (cue spooky music and fade to black).
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