The trouble with (living) heroes

Eugene Richards is one of my photography heroes. His work and words have meant a great deal to my evolution and education as a photographer, and I'll always feel very thankful; except for today. Richards is still living, breathing, and working (very well), and that has become a problem because it allows him to "steal" assignments from other, perhaps less experienced, photographers... um, like me. Damn you Richards! You and me: knife fight. Shit, no, bad idea. You'll probably cut me to ribbons. Well anyway, we'll duel in some non-violent fashion soon, you just wait! Watch your back at Nick Nichol's new festival. And you too Kathy Ryan... don't think I'm not in on your game.

To explain: early last year I shot a story for the New York Times about a wrongly-convicted inmate named Orlando Boquete (the prison system wrongly spelled his last name Bosquete, but now that he's free he's dropped the offending "s") who was being released based on DNA evidence brought out by Innocence Project. Orlando is an amazing guy with an incredible story, and it was one of handful of assignments that I shot last year that I really felt strongly about and pushed as hard as I could to do a good job on. The two days that I was down in the Florida Keys awaiting his release (he was subsequently held by INS, delaying his final release by 90 days), were pretty thin on good opportunities for photography, but after I learned that the writer was going to do a longer piece for the Sunday magazine, I really wanted to try to continue the work.

Alas, Gene Richards was tapped instead of I. Sniff, sniff. OK, I'm over it. I haven't seen the hard copy of the magazine yet, so I can't speak to what they actually ran (and God knows what incredible stuff he may have shot in addition), but I think I could have kicked ass too.

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