My Life is a Missed Opportunity

The thought of a "missed opportunity" on a photograph happens every single day I walk down the street or go through my daily routines. My eyes are always looking for a photograph where the composition and framing of the image are all perfectly in balance, similar to Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment." Cartier-Bresson would wait around for as long as possible to get the image he wanted, whether it be a man jumping with a perfectly-rendered reflection of this man on the ground, or a bicyclist adding the finishing touch to a photograph where there would appear to be a hole in the image otherwise. Henri Cartier-Bresson defined the "decisive moment" as " the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event it's proper expression." A lot of my photographs are primarily taken in the city, and everything in the city is always faced paced, especially the people walking down the street. Every time I'm there I always find the perfect composition for a photograph but I'm either too slow to pull out my camera, the person I wanted in the image is already gone, or I have a roll of film in my camera that's specifically for the purpose of an assignment for class.

While working on my final project for this documentary photography class, I have found that I have missed out on many photographic opportunities because when I go into the city I only bring one 35mm slr, and I can only insert one roll of film at a time. If I am not shooting for this class I am shooting for my alternative processes class, and I somehow always find that I get the most inspired for images when I'm not shooting for that class. My worst nightmare is mixing contact sheets, and once I start getting into shooting for one class my mind automatically gets one image idea for the other class, and then I'm simply stuck in a pickle. The thought of carrying two 35mm slrs seems tedious, especially if I have a different format camera on me as well.

One "missed opportunity" that is prominent in my mind happened recently, within the past couple of days. I was shooting in the city for my alternative final project and I've been walking around taking pictures of city buildings with odd perspectives and bizarre shadows cast on them. I was walking around the Gramercy neighborhood (one of the places I usually walk around) and I walked down one of the upper '10s blocks heading west from 3rd avenue. I've been taking pictures all day for this project and I found one medium-sized apartment building that I fell in love with. The moment I looked at that building the sun was beating down hard and was free of clouds, and the buildings across the street made this gorgeous cast shadow where half of the building was filled with sunlight and the other half filled with an abstract shadow that moved up and down as you followed the line where the shadow meets the direct sunlight. The clouds had kept moving over the sun for the past couple of hours and to get that perfect cast shadow was rare for the lighting of that specific day and time. I waited around for a little while on that street, just staring at that building with my camera, hoping that the clouds would move away from the sun again and create that gorgeous cast shadow that I've been dreaming of, but after about fifteen minutes I gave up and kept on walking. I got one image similar to the one I wanted, but it just wasn't perfect in my eyes because the shadows were not as strong as what I saw previously and the sunlight was somewhat covered by a cloud.

Sometimes I feel as though I will go through my entire life and never be completely satisfied with the shots I have taken and the compositions I have made. I will always try to make up for that "missed opportunity" and try to create even better images then the ones I could only have dreamed of.