My People
Behind the Photographs
Sometimes a photograph gives you more than a memory. Sometimes it gives you a title.
People often ask where the title Musings and Tall Tales came from.
Oddly enough...
It began with two strangers.
Nada and I were sitting on a pier one afternoon, doing what we both enjoy—absolutely nothing except watching the world go by.
These two gentlemen were standing nearby, looking out over the water.
They didn't know I was taking their picture.
There was no posing.
No smiling for the camera.
Just two men quietly watching the water.
When I got home, I experimented with the photographs.
I gave them a warm, old-time look that made them feel as though they had been tucked away in an old sea captain's journal for a hundred years.
I liked the photographs.
I just wasn't sure what to do with them.
Years went by.
Then one day, I looked at them again and thought...
"What if I just made something up?"
Not a lie.
A tall tale.
One that was just believable enough to make you smile.
Suddenly, these two strangers weren't strangers anymore.
They became old shipmates.
The three of us had served aboard a salvage vessel somewhere off the coast of Madagascar, searching for long-lost treasure beneath the sea.
Every morning before sunrise, the fellow in the cap and I would meet on deck with a cup of coffee and the day's first cigarette.
We didn't say much.
Usually nothing more than,
"Morning."
"You got a light?"
Funny how two people can become friends without ever having much to say.
Of course...
None of that ever happened.
Or did it?
That's the fun of a tall tale.
It doesn't ask you to believe it.
It simply asks you to enjoy it.
The truth is much simpler.
These were just two gentlemen standing at the edge of the pier, quietly watching the water.
Yet somehow, they became my people.
They reminded me that every face has a story.
Every photograph invites a question.
And sometimes...
The stories we imagine are just as enjoyable as the ones we know to be true.
Those two gentlemen gave me the title of this journal.
Musings and Tall Tales.
Every photograph has a story.
Some are true.
Some have simply grown better with the telling.
Photographer's Notes
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