Six years ago, George came by to give me this photo had framed for my birthday. It was one of his favorites, a black and white shot of a  young woman swimming in the Washington Square Park in the summer, a mysterious light shining down on her from above, a gift to the angels.

It hands over my head on my bedroom wall. I have a half dozen or so George Forss photos, I love this one the most.

George said a ray from the afternoon sun caught the water and gave it that eerie and beautiful light. He said he waited hours for it. Watching the clouds, he just had a feeling it would come. He thought a fountain light came on as it got dark and caught the water shooting up in the air.

The dog was a classic Forss touch.

It’s a precious painting one of George’s favorites and one of my favorites.

As did many of George’s photographs, this one was iconic, it captured the feeling of New York City and the exuberance of Greenwich Village that could not possibly be anywhere else.

He caught the wonder of the place at the height of its influence on our culture. It captures the wonder of the place. I lived in the village at the time this photo was taken, I could almost swear I was there the day he took it, but that has to be a delusion.

The girl is proud and defiant in that fountain, not the least bit uncomfortable to be so visible, that is very much the spirit of the New York, very much the spirit of George. The proud and outspoken girls took turns standing in that fountain, daring the cops to arrest them.

They never did.

George taught me so much about photography. All of George’s great shots had to do with light in one way or another, the light of the sun, the moon, or the great city with all of its towering buildings.

I could never learn how he made and ground his own lenses. He took wide-angle photos that no one has been able to duplicate and I could never understand.

Always make sure you know where the sun is, he told me, the sun is your best friend, and keep your viewfinder on the light. It will often surprise you. George was a genius when it came to the technical skills of great photographers.

But I never forgot his teaching about the light. He taught me to look where no one else was looking, and also to find a way to go where no one else was going. The best photos, he said, were the ones nobody would take but you.

Every photograph can be beautiful if the photographer has his eyes and heart open, he also said. We went to the town’s Memorial Day parade together every year and George always managed to find a shot no one else saw or bothered to take.

He made the ordinary look magnificent, perhaps because street photographers like him understand what real people feel and want.

He had a wonderful eye for real people and he taught me to love the people whose portraits I took. You can’t take a bad portrait shot of someone you love, he said, or a really good one of someone you dislike.

George shot from the heart, he photographed images that touched his emotions “and made my heart flutter a bit,” he would say.

“Of course,” he loved to add, “You don’t want to flutter too much, or you’ll have a heart attack.” George had more than a little Marx brother inside of him.

He adored the old slapstick movies.

This is a wonderful shot. I don’t have a lens that would capture all this – the park, the buildings on the other side of the park, this young woman in the foundation, the light shooting down on her from the heavens, almost as if the angels thew a lot on it.

Maybe they did. I can’t imagine how he took this photo and managed to catch this light.

George loved to drag me into his Rube Goldberg darkroom while he soaked and hung his pictures In order to turn his darkroom lights on, he had to go out to the porch and unplug the refrigerator and the TV in the next room.

George confessed to me once that he was “borrowing” the Wi-Fi signal from next door. That was how he watched golf tournaments with his friend Jack even though he had never played gold or owned a club or ball.

He praised my photography often and said I  had a natural feel for composition. That meant the world for me, as George was one of those people who had never learned to lie.

Thanks for all the lessons George and the next time you are flying overhead with your homemade camera, drop down with your friends and show me the photos.