When I was in school a photography teacher challenged our class to shoot a certain photograph.

He told us that he wanted us photograph an egg. Not just any egg but an egg in front of a white background, on a white paper plate and for his young photography students to show contrast, depth, shadow and form. I thought "Wow is this guy crazy?"

Later that day I went home and thought about what the teacher had said. So I tried to photograph it as best I could but I couldn't get the egg to show everything my teacher was looking for. I tried and tried. I agonized over it for a solid week.

Then one night I had a dream about eggs. Stupid I know, but I had been agonizing over one shot for a solid week! That night I went to bed exhuasted and woke up at 2am with an epiphany that was so simple that it took me a week to realize it. I sat up and wrote down on a piece of paper "brwn eg" then fell asleep.

Waking up the next morning I looked at the paper trying to decipher what it said. It took me a minute or two to realize what I had wrote. "Brown Egg." That was it, a brown egg! I could show contrast, depth, shadow, and form all with a brown because white is boring and no one wants to look at a boring photograph!

I strolled into the darkroom confiedently with a full roll of 24 exposures! I was so proud of my first roll I didn't even want to develop it but I had to. I handed in my photograph that day and went home excited, that I was going to pass my first photo assignment.

Three days later the teacher gave us back our photographs and I couldn't believe my eyes! An "F" was marked under my description of the photograph with a note "Little contrast and no sense of a photographer's eye." I was devestated how could a teacher put this under a photographers first serious photograph?

That night I took my negatives of the egg and burned them over my kitchen sink. I just let a week's worth of hard work burn. Then I ran the water and ground up the halide bits in the garbage disposal. Earlier at school I was so disgusted with myself that I just threw my photograph with the "F" on it in the trash before I walked out of the classroom.

As I was laying down I thought about my grade on the photograph and started laughing. "It's just an egg!" "Just because you couldn't photograph an egg doesn't mean you're a bad photographer, "I said out loud to my empty apartment.

"What makes you a lousy photographer is if you quit because of one bad print!"