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I have a confession to make…it’s genuinely shocking that I’ve never actually written about this photo that was taken 03 Apr 2012 when I was on walkabout to New York City.

Oh, I’ve told the story through the years to those who I’m close to, especially when they’ve come to visit at the Nerdery and see the gratuitous New York City porn of my absolute favourites from my trips to that city.

The question they’re usually asked is “of all of the pictures of New York you see in this living room, which one is my favourite and why?”

They often see one showing the of the last rays of sunlight from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River reflecting off the glass windows of a building next to the Empire State Building that has the top of the building and the spire lit in rainbow colours.

There’s also the one of the Statue of Liberty shot later on that same semi-circular twilight cruise round lower Manhattan with a beautiful blue sky in the background and wonderful lighting.

It’s not surprising as they’re amongst the larger prints in the living room and they’re prominently (if off-centred!) displayed over the mantle of the gas log fireplace that hasn’t worked in about forever.

This one is done as an 8″x10″ print in a set of eight mounted above the sofa and it’s the first one in the top row and even then they’ll often pick three or four of the others.

I can’t really blame them but of all of the pictures I’ve shot in New York City, none were more emotionally powerful than the series of photos bracketing the one that is by far my favourite.

Here’s the real story behind that photo that the 25th anniversary of the attacks that made it possible seems as good a time as ever to share the tale with the rest of the world.

This was taken during one of my solo visits to the National 9/11 Memorial that surrounds the site where the Twin Towers once stood until they were destroyed in two acts of unspeakable and unforgivable evil.

The footprint of the towers themselves have been transformed into two massive waterfalls with the names of all of the victims who were killed in the towers as well as on the two hijacked planes that were deliberately flown into the tops of the buildings fatally compromising the internal support system that eventually led to their collapse.

Anyone who was alive that day certainly has a story of their own to tell of where they were and what they were doing that fateful day in 2001.

Eight years later would be my first ever visit to New York City proper (or at least the first one I could remember other than seeing the skyline from Perth Amboy in the late 1970s) and my first visit to the site was a profound harbinger of the emotional reaction to the sheer scale of that evil act that was to come.

This day was my first visit to the newly opened Memorial site and like I’d experienced three years prior, it seems a shockingly quiet site for a place with tonnes of construction still going on all round and the general level of noise that is Lower Manhattan on a typical weekday.

To be sure, there’s still noise to be heard but it’s almost as if one is in Maxwell Smart’s “cone of silence” was over the entire site and there is such a palpable calm as if the place is holding it’s breath just waiting for you to come and visit and hear the whispers of the stories of those departed souls who can no longer tell their stories themselves.

I had wandered round the footprints of the fallen towers for at least a hour just marveling at the sheer number of names inscribed round the waterfalls.

I’d even found one I was looking for from American Airlines flight 11.

I was a huge fan of the TV shows Cheers and Wings where David Angell was a producer and writer and he and his wife were on flight 11 which was flown into the north tower (1 World Trade).

I ended up finding a bench so that I could take what I’d thought would be a short break to allow some time to process what I was feeling and just how overwhelming the sheer scale of the attacks was.

As I was sitting on that bench, I still had the camera in hand so I was occasionally taking pictures of whatever caught my eye.

When I snapped the photo at the top of this post, what had drawn my eye was the spindly patterns of the branches of the trees.

This was early April in New York City which means that it’s still practically winter and the trees hadn’t even started to bud much less sprout their leaves and the intricate patterns were absolutely fascinating and also did a wonderful job of bringing me some measure of calm and balance.

Normally when I’m shooting, you’ll rarely find me chimping the images (pulling them up on the digital camera’s screen which is often accompanied by sounds of delight for a particularly good photo that sounds awfully like a happy chimpanzee) especially after I’ve gotten the settings where I want them.

Usually if I’m chimping an image, it’s to show someone a shot of them that is particularly memorable.

I know my Nikons well enough to know that what I’m seeing through the viewfinder and the light meter is pretty much what I’ll get when it comes out of the camera so I don’t actually need to constantly check the photos. I’ll sift through them in Lightroom after unloading the pictures from the camera and that’s often the first time I really see the photos.

But this time, I figured as I was taking a break I’d have a peek at some of the shots I’d gotten so far and when that photo came up on the screen it was quite the shock to say the least.

The best way that I can describe what it felt like was that even though I could breathe perfectly fine, it felt like all of the oxygen had been instantaneously sucked out of the immediate atmosphere.

I literally could not move from where I was sitting and I can only imagine what sort of expression was on my face.

I genuinely have no idea how much time had passed before a couple of shadows fall over me and I looked up to see two NYPD police officers looking down at me with a look of concern bordering on wondering how quickly they could get an ambulance to the Memorial site.

They ask me if I’m OK and I start repeating a whispered “I never saw you” over and over again.

Now I’m sure they’re wondering if the ambulance should actually be bringing the boys in white to transport me to Bellvue!

Lord knows, I’d have not blamed them if they insisted on an involuntary commit because I’m sure it made absolutely no sense to them.

Fortunately, they gave me a couple of minutes to come back to my senses to the point where I could assure them that I was actually fine and in no need of any medical intervention.

If you can imagine that they had serious doubts about the truth of what I had told them, you’d be absolutely right!

I finally get to the point where I ask them if I can explain why I was in such a state of shock.

I pull up that picture on the camera and point out that what had drawn my eye was the intricate pattern of the branches of the trees.

I was so hyper-focused on those branches that I genuinely never saw these same police officers in the bottom of the frame standing next to the names that surrounded the waterfalls when I was looking through the viewfinder and snapping the pictures.

I then looked them both in the eye and asked if I could ask one question of them: “were you looking at the names of your brother and sister officers who never made it out of the Towers that day?”

It turns out that I wasn’t the only one shocked by that photo as their faces quickly turned as white as Casper the ghost and I thought they might well need to sit down on that bench more than I did.

When they were able to speak again after a fairly decent interval of time had passed, they told me that their beat was always in the neighbourhood of the Twin Towers and that they requested duty at the Memorial the day that it had opened about eight months before that photo was taken and that their entire day on duty was spent patrolling there.

They’d been walking that beat every day and they would pass by that particular part of the waterfall several times.

I was apparently the first person they’d made contact with who had actually noticed the true reason why.

At this point, they seemed satisfied that I wasn’t quite as unhinged or a danger to myself as I’d initially appeared and I told them that it’d probably be a while before I could resume my wandering round New York City.

They made a couple more laps round the footprints and would occasionally look my way and give me a surreptitious thumbs up and I’d respond in kind.

45 minutes later, I was finally able to stand up and continue on with being on walkabout.

As I was walking away, both of them looked over and gave me a small smile…you know the kind of smile that no one else is meant to see nor understand the reason behind it but the message was loud and clear nonetheless.

To this day, I have never forgotten just how powerful a moment in my life that whole experience was and to think it was because my mind never saw the police officers that were standing right in front of the lens as I was concentrating on the branches of the trees.

In the couple of visits to the Memorial in the year after the photo, I’d never managed to find them again to thank them for giving me the time and space to find some measure of balance so I could carry on with my day.

Perhaps what all three of us needed was a moment of genuine understanding and a shared emotional experience in the presence of the unimaginable.

For my part, I’ll never forget that day or their part in it.

That photo on my wall that is indelibly etched upon my heart and soul won’t permit me.

And I suspect you probably won’t forget either on a day that reminds us all that this country and it’s citizens are at their very best when they come together in common cause regardless of where they might have come from or their ancestry to be united citizens of the United States willing to preserve, protect and defend this country of ours regardless of the cost. 🙂