Life magazine’s splendid photojournalists taught me how to create a visual story. Alfred Eisenstaedt and Eliot Elisofon’s images, in particular, made me aware of the power of a moment. I spent hours watching, waiting—a hunter’s meditative state—for that decisive moment that told the story—of a wedding, the weather, the personality in a person’s face or hands, a changing news story, a symphony, a baby being born. What I couldn’t photograph, I wrote, what couldn’t be said in words, could be told in pictures. And along the way, won first place in the professional category of Life magazine’s last International Photography Contest.