THE first time I went on a photo shoot with Gabe was during my freshman year. We had met on the Yale lightweight crew team—both of us were walk-ons, he a year older than I. My first impression of Gabe was that he was a little eccentric, very friendly, had a great big smile, and didn’t really seem like a typical college rower. In reality, Gabe Diaz isn’t a typical anything.
When we went on our first shoot, we were in Florida on a Spring Break training trip with the crew team. I know going to Florida for Spring Break sounds pretty awesome, but when we weren’t rowing, the trip consisted mostly of sitting around the hotel pool and thinking about when our next meal would be. Between the morning and afternoon practice sessions, we had plenty of free time to walk around and explore the area. There wasn’t anything very exciting to see. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t be able to take some cool photographs.
So one day after practice Gabe asked if I wanted to go take some photos with him. I had nothing better to do other than work on my tan, and Gabe seemed like a cool guy to hang out with, so I happily went along. I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but we probably just began walking towards no destination in particular, with Gabe stopping every now and then to take a shot, explaining why he thought it made for a great picture, what with all the light and the angles and so forth. (Gabe knows a lot about photography and he is always super-excited to share his knowledge with interested folks—that makes him a really great teacher).
Pretty soon the camera was in my hands, and Gabe told me to take a picture of anything I wanted. He taught me the basics of using the camera—how to focus, how to click the button to take a picture—pretty complex stuff. I even learned how to load the film! The first shot I took was of an air-vac machine at a gas station. Later I took a sweet shot of Gabe standing in a wooded area near the highway eating a loaf of Amish strawberry bread. Three years later, I still have the black-and-white printouts of both of those.
After an hour or two, we had to return to the hotel, either for practice or for dinner, I don’t remember which. It was a fun afternoon, but at the time, I didn’t think it represented anything more than that. What really happened that day in small-town Florida was something special—a partnership was born. And a very unlikely partnership it was! I had never had much interest in photography—when I did express myself artistically, it usually involved spending a couple minutes during lecture making drawings in Microsoft Paint. But over the next three years, taking photos with Gabe has created some of the most fun, memorable, and questionably legal experiences that I’ve had during college. I look forward to sharing lots of those memories on this blog.
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