When I was teaching at Santa Monica College. I would always walk by this zoology instructor’s open door, and his feathered friends and other creatures would be hanging out with him. One day he let me take his portrait and I had fun while he posed with his classmates. Besides having lots of living as well as stuffed wildlife in his room, he had led quite a wild life himself, having been friends with Marlon Brando, who allowed him to bring research assistants, aka his students, to Brando’s private island near Tahiti. Compositionally speaking, his room had many focal points, cacophonous and chaotic. Everywhere you looked there was something to attract your eye and to learn from, much like his style of teaching, which was filled with lots of anecdotes and interesting facts. The light sources ranged from daylight to tungsten to fluorescent, making light balancing a thrill ride.