CELEBRITY PHOTO HUNT ONLINE

I really had to dig deep into the archives for this shot, which was taken in June 2005. I'm trying to go through my film negatives from my pre-digital days, post-processing the photos and trying to remove as much noise as possible.

It's funny, for most photos I take I can vividly remember the process. Maybe not details like what I set the f-stop to, or shutter speed, but how I was setting up the composition, and the individual circumstances. For this photo, I remember our time spent in San Francisco.

I was on summer break from college, 21 at the time, with my family on our last "big" trip together. We had traveled out of the city to drive through wine country and were on our way back to the hotel. We stopped in Sausalito for dinner at a restaurant overlooking the bay and the city. It was getting dark as we were finishing the meal. I had my first "real" camera with me, a film Minolta Maxxum 5 that Justin had bought me for Valentine's day.

When I was working on my degree in historic preservation, much of the coursework focused on documenting historic buildings. It's a multidisiplinary approach, using measured drawings, architectural descriptions, and photography. In this class we learned the basics of photography, so that summer when I learned we were going on vactation in California I packed up my camera and 10 rolls of film.

Back to the story. The restaurant had huge glass walls overlooking the city, and as the sun set, we saw a spectacular full moon beginning to rise over the city. I hurried up and finished my meal, ran to the car and grabbed my camera. Knowing it was too dark already for handheld shots, I propped the camera on a huge rock, leveled it the best I could with the camera strap, and set the self-timer to minimize camera shake. I took 5 or 6 shots praying that I captured the spectacular moonrise.

Literally right after we landed back in Pittsburgh I headed to the one-hour photo center to get my film developed anticipating some good shots. This was one of them. I was so proud of this shot. I had minimal training and wasn't sure if any of the moon shots would turn out. The image is a little blurry, and not at all my best shot, but it captured one of the most memorable scenes I've experienced, and for me, that's what photography is all about.

Sarah Miller writes: "For spring break a big group of our friends went down to Marco Island, Florida. One day we were relaxing on the beach, enjoying the wonderful weather when a man several feet away from us was building this magnificent sandcastle! We watched him slave over it for an hour or two, waited until he left, and claimed it for ourselves!!" Pictured are: Sarah Miller, Robby Lear, Casey Yeakel, Lee Singleton, Susan Dudley, Catherine Heil and Erin Menard.

Photo submitted by Sarah Miller

April 6, 2006