On Friday, I was assigned to shoot a portrait of Francis Oline, a local WWII veteran living at the Cheyenne VA Medical Center. Oline submitted a touching story about proposing to his late wife to the paper for a Valentine’s Day feature. I was trying to make a nice portrait of Oline with a framed photo of him and his wife, but I kept getting frustrated with myself. The background is too busy. There’s a glare on the frame from my flash. The window is too hot. As this self criticism was running laps through my head, I was having a pretty nice conversation with Oline as he reflected on his life. At one moment as he talked about his late wife, Dolorus, he paused and looked away from me as he reflected on a story in their life together. I snapped a few frames. It was a touching moment, and by far the best photo from the assignment (seen below). It might not be the best composed image, but for me the moment completely trumps the composition in this case. After I had taken several frames, I listened to about another 45 minutes of old stories from Oline, including a very interesting one about hunting buried train robbery treasure near Cheyenne. I felt bad as I had to leave soon thereafter in order to make an afternoon meeting back at the newsroom. Oline is a lovely gentleman and I hope my pictures represent him well in the newspaper.
