Noh Motion
This photograph was taken on the first night of a workshop taught by my idol, Ernst Haas. Ernst took us to a Noh play being performed at an outside theatre in Tokyo. At one point that night, Ernst came by to see how I was doing; he didn't know my name yet. I was using a Nikon FE and a 135 millimeter lens, mounted on a tripod. He glanced at my settings, looked through the lens and then turned to me and whispered: "you'll see --- you're going to get something you like". That night, after the play, we turned our film in for processing. The next day, Ernst looked at our film. My heart skipped a beat when it was my turn and he began to look at my film through his loupe. When he got to this shot, he stopped and studied it. He picked up his head, looked around the room and said with a sense of excitement: "I was standing behind the girl who took this photograph". When he spotted me, he smiled and said: "I told you you'd get something you would like!" It was a major highlight for me and a moment I will never forget. Ernst Haas liked my photograph. Tokyo, Japan. June 1984.