When I first saw a New York Times photo of a teen texting while driving, I had assumed it was just a photo illustration. The picture showed the driver texting with both hands — a youth in the passenger seat was steadying the wheel. The spedometer visible in the photo suggested the car was moving at 60 miles per hour. It was too crazy and too horrible to be real.
But I learned this weekend that the photo is real — captured by coincidence while a Times photographer working on an unrelated story was riding in the back seat.
Public Editor Clark Hoyt explored the origins of the photo in his latest column, A Dramatic Photo: Was It Real?
The photographer, Dan Gill, a freelancer, took the picture last November while on assignment for The Times for an entirely different story – an H.I.V. scare at a St. Louis high school. He said the picture was not staged and that he was just doing what Times editors asked: recording the lives of some students at the school.
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