I put this photo on not because I think it's a good photo; I'm well-aware that it's pretty awful.That's actually why I like it. I put this photo on because it was the first photo that I ever pre-visioned and then actually took. I thought about what I wanted, loaded up my flimsy aluminum tripod and 2 megapixel olympus on my bike, grabbed a beer or two, and peddled to downtown Okayama. I used the timer, experimented with different shutter speeds, and fired away until I got something I liked. The ghostly legs in the picture were completely unplanned and I probably didn't even realized that they were there until I printed it out. I was pretty proud of it, and I printed a large copy and hung it on my classroom wall, where students told me it was great even though I'm sure many of them knew it wasn't. This photo, while really really bad, gives me a lot of hope. I've gotten a lot better since I took this shot in 2001, but I think like most students of any creative endeavor I feel that I haven't improved nearly enough. Revisiting these old shots packed away in an digital shoebox of old photos, makes me feel like improvement is an actual tangible thing that I am capable of doing.