He kept pressuring me to eat oysters.
Doug Tesner and I sat in a restaurant in New Orleans' French Quarter one evening in January 2008, me with a po-boy sandwich and he with a dish full of slimy, slippery oysters.
We were in Louisiana covering a Traverse City Christian School hurricane relief mission trip. My unofficial assignment was to eat an oyster because I generally avoid seafood.
Since he knew I wouldn't do it, we decided we'd make it look like I was about to take a bite of the briny delicacy, and he would document it with his camera. He brought it everywhere on that trip — even to the restaurants.
I can't recall if that picture was taken. (I keep pressuring Doug for his outtakes). He easily shot hundreds of photos the week we were there.
Chances are, Doug Tesner has taken your picture or snapped a shot of someone you know. Maybe you've only noticed his photos in the newspaper.
State journalism associations have recognized Doug's work as some of the best in Michigan numerous times in his six-year stint here. He said he doesn't have a secret to capturing great moments. He just knows them when he finds them.
I saw that clearly in New Orleans. Doug's photos represent a variety of Gulf Coast life. Much of his work was related to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, then nearly three years prior but still just as devastating.
He shot derelict homes and overgrown landscapes. He caught a reverend overseeing the reconstruction of his Lower Ninth Ward church.
He was there when a separate small congregation held services on the site of its flooded parish for the first time since the storm.
Others he found by pure serendipity. Many of them have never been published, but they are among my favorite of his New Orleans photos.
On the way to the students' work site one morning, he rolled down the driver's side window as we passed a homeless tent encampment underneath a freeway bridge. He slowed the car so he could operate his camera.
Walking back from dinner one night, he stopped to photograph an impromptu performance by street musicians in the French Quarter.
I've been thinking about that trip more of late, as I've visited Doug in the hospital to chronicle his cancer treatment for the Record-Eagle. We made a good team.
I tried to snap a photo of Doug outside our hotel — the photographer in front of the lens — but he caught me and made a face. The quality of my pocket digital camera might not have been the same, but it's OK.
Sometimes I, too, can find a great moment.
