My plan was to capture the lattice work of the tower in black and white. I was using a borrowed 35 mm SLR which I had never used before. My plans to read the instruction manual on the flight over were thwarted by Ambien, so it was a long shot that I’d get even get one good photo out of the roll. I did the best I could, walking around the base, looking up, positioning the camera in every possible angle, praying the automatic feature would save me.

Someone once told me that if you get only one photo that you absolutely loved on one roll, you should consider yourself lucky. In my dreams, I imagined all my photos on display in a gallery. I shot away.

I also wanted to get a picture of the entire tower – which is not easy to do when you are standing directly under it. Finally, Barbara’s cough took its toll, so we rested awhile on a bench. And that’s when she suggested I lie down, aim and shoot the tower straight up. Not caring whether or not I looked like a complete fool or a tourist, I went for it, and then, nearly fell off of the bench. That was the last photo I took of the tower, and all I ever needed to. The laughing and coughing continued, and we went on to lunch. Dinner followed the next night and here we are, a couple years later, tons of emails, until we meet again.

And my photos? Much to my surprise, nearly every single one was a keeper. I framed almost all of them and opened my gallery–in my bathroom. But the best part of my trip was making a friend for life. Now that’s what I call luck.

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A columnist at www.sanitycentral.com (“Moms Always Write”), Linda Beaudry Condrillo has recently left her “real” job at an insane asylum disguising itself as a law firm to pursue freelance journalism and continue feature writing for her local newspaper. A self-professed "Desperate Scrapbooker," Linda also fancies herself a fauxtographer who can’t wait to take her next "business" trip to Paris to get some more shots. She resides in the suburbs of New Jersey with her husband, two children, and dog -- the latter being the most well behaved. If you have a plum writing assignment for Linda, you can reach her at dabeaud_at_aol_com. (replace: _at_ with @ and _ with a dot .)

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Article and Images Copyright © 2007 Linda Beaudry Condrillo. All Rights Reserved.