Captions: The Stories Behind the Photos

The Art of Composition

Tools

By Kirsten Swann

Story Created: Dec 24, 2012 at 7:38 AM AKDT

Story Updated: Dec 24, 2012 at 7:38 AM AKDT

Presented by Snapped

It’s one of his favorite photographs.

Stuart Schulman snapped the Ship Creek view just as the sun first peeked over the Chugach Mountains, and the dark silhouettes of the cranes parked near the railroad tracks were framed against a burning orange-to-indigo horizon.

He said the sky was on fire that morning.

Schulman learned how to take pictures at an early age. Growing up in Flushing, New York, he received his first camera from a friend’s father, who critiqued slides of his photographs and taught him the right way to frame a shot.

The love for composition grew. For years, Schulman said he carried a guitar and an Olympus Trip 35, played pedal steel and took pictures of all the things around him that caught his eye. But he said everything changed on May 20, 2011. After he had a stroke in his sleep, the man who loved music and photography found himself struggling to relearn how to speak and find his balance.

So he worked through physical therapy, and then speech therapy, and when he was able to drive he took his camera and began taking pictures again. Schulman said most of his photos these days are taken on a point-and-shoot he picked up from a pawn shop, and he aims to capture something every day.

Now, his photos include everything from tree-framed Denali views to the northern lights, local wildlife, sweeping landscapes and the flaming Ship Creek sunrise that enthralled him.

There’s another photograph he loves, too.

“The last time I was in New York I ran into Elvis Costello in a music store and he let me take his picture,” he said. “I was very thrilled.”
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