My first published photograph!

[chrisinhouston]

I've been going through files from my late mother's office. She was highly organized having been an skilled office manager for 40 years or so going back to WWII where she worked with the OSS in China.

I found a file with my name on it and plenty of things like old report cards (depressing as I barely passed many classes), my high school diploma, my Catholic records like baptism and first communion. And then I found my first picture to ever be published and I even got a byline. It was 1972 and I was just 16 and while out hiking in the woods near our home I found this manhole that was spewing out sewage into the local waterway. I took some pictures and word got around and a guy came by and asked to use it in the newspaper. Sadly I did not get paid!

The rest is history. To think that my career started with a photo of shit.