It’s Not About the F-Stop

Use & Abuse

Anthony Polvere, an associate professor at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, had promised to take me to a diner that had been around a long time.

We sat down to have coffee and I saw him watching me. I was beyond excited. The counter was a visual record of its history. Each place had a dark brown circular shape where thousands of cups of coffee had literally scraped off all the color of the counter. Add to this the yellow that had worn through the original color in the shapes of thousands of forearms holding the coffee.

I was blown away by the graphics of the countertop and it reminded me of something I always tell my students: Try, and admittedly, it’s difficult, but try to show in your images the past or the future.

I give them ...