For years I have talked about Mary Ellen to students in my workshops. I pointed out her ferocious focus that gets both subjects and viewers to pay attention in the making of a photograph.

I was a few years behind her in college, and the sight of her walking around the campus with her camera perhaps gave me my first hint that photography could be a really serious undertaking, though it took several years before I took up a camera myself. Somewhere in this house there’s a picture she took of me for a campus theater group, but I can’t find it right now.

Later on when we were both teaching in Maine, I remember walking in on a phone conversation she was having with a client. I knew it was intense when she said “Look, I’m trying to take better pictures for you!” Ferocious focus…whether the client knew it or not.

That same week we were scheduled to give our slideshows to the school on the same night. She came in with 3 trays of slides (240 images), and said “I’m not going to talk about all these, I’m just going to show them … for about 5 seconds each.” It worked. And fortunately, I had shown first, as it would have been a tough act to follow. As it was, I managed to hold my own, and it was a great experience for the two of us.

Looking over her work during the past few days, I saw how clearly it was rooted in the great photojournalistic tradition of Black and White and Being There. But there was something else about it that completely transcended the tradition, and that was that whenever she entered a situation, she was there absolutely and completely. Events seemed to turn toward her and clarify in her vision. It’s there in the pictures. Ferocious focus.

She could be generous toward others, and as an example she wrote an appreciative comment that was printed on the jacket of my book, Among Trees. Not long afterward she said, “Let’s trade prints.” As so often happens with these intentions, we never got around to it. I think I had this lurking feeling that I hadn’t yet taken my best picture, that there’d be time later.

As it happened, there was not.