Photo from February 28, 2015

I had just written an article mentioning my old high school, when a classmate of mine messaged me on Twitter when he realized why he friended me. It turned out he was in Mountain View on business, so I drove down to visit him. The last time I saw him was 25 years ago!

We picked him up at his hotel and I suggested Clarke’s because it’s one of the best burger joints around. While waiting for food, I snapped this photo.

A.J.
Clarkes Charcoal Broiler
Mountain View, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2
1/350sec, iso 160, 35mm (47mm)

I keep forgetting the razor-thin depth-of-field, so though one eye was in focus, the other one wasn’t. As I mentioned, I prefer monochrome images when I shoot with my Leica, so I used nik Silver Efex Pro. Control points helped me separate his hair from the background and add some sharpening in the blurry eye.

A.J. mentioned something that happened in high school that I forgot.

A computer center wasn’t built until I was a junior so A.J. and I, being nerds, hung out at the only student-accessible computer in the school which was tucked in the back corner of the fiction section of the library building.

One day, apparently I got into an argument with someone about whether or not it was safe to jump out of the window of the computer room. Because the library was built into the slope of the hill, it was one story up. Pretty soon I was hanging off the side of the window when, because everyone started laughing, the Mr. Jeffries, the librarian happened to check out the commotion. He looked in horror as I let go and ran down the stairs to find me safely on the grass.

I guess he was relieved that I was alive because I don’t remember receiving detention for it.

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