Return to the Image Gallery
A needle in a haystack
This is why I take pictures.
Lots of pictures.
The day is February 7th 1999. The place is the VolksBlast car show. As I tend to do, I've been taking pictures at every free moment, all day long. As it happens, people have tended to duck the camera.
Sara was one of those people.
I had made several attempts to get a good picture of her. Each time she either ducked away from the camera, scowled into the lens, or posed with a standard portrait smile.
What I simply wanted was an honest photo with an honest smile. She wasn't cooperating. I kept trying.
There I was, sitting, watching the presentation of a special award to one of the many valued participants of VolksBlast, when Sara walks up behind me.
She says hi, then stands behind me watching the happenings on stage right along with the rest of the crowd.
This is my chance. As nonchalantly as possible, I flip the camera on, turn the camera to point up and behind me, gaze back at the stage to avoid drawing attention, and... Click! (or in this case beep... it was a digital camera)
Perfectly framed. The balance of color is perfect. The tree and sky above us gives the perfect back ground. Contrasting expressions on our faces.
Sure, there is some color bleeding, and the resolution is low (by products of the cheap digital I was using), but that doesn't detract from the image.
It is perfect.
One shot wouldn't have done it. Posing wouldn't have worked; I couldn't have planed that shot if my life depended on it. The only reason this picture got taken is because I took ninety-nine other pictures that day.
So I'm going to keep snapping shot after shot. Producing mostly blurry images of shoes, leaves and other things that make people wonder; I'm going to ignore the hassle and expense.
I'm going to keep at it because I know that that one is waiting out there along with the other ninety-nine.
And that one is worth it.
