The Best Pic You Didn't Take

this image haunts me
perhaps you will understand,
perhaps not

I was visiting the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center in 2004.
I looked out across harbor, past the submarine memorial, to the Arizona and Missouri

of all the things in the world
what should I see
but the Hiroshima baseball team visiting the center
20, perhaps 30 teenage baseball players
wearing their team baseball shirts, looking out towards the sunken battleship Ariizona

I had my camera, I could not, would not take the shot
it seemed to me too much of an invasion of privacy.

GAWD it was a great image
it bothers me I did not take the shot
but yet I am glad I did not.

Stephen
 
One is persistent in my mind and I knew I'd regret it for a long time.

It was that gypsy woman at a crowded eastern european Bus station. She was smoking a cigarette when her 7-8 yearish-old son got thirsty, stopped begging for money and came to her. She took her breast out and he drank while she was smoking, normally, as if everything was cool. It was a very rugged, physically dirty, indecent and classic scene. The whole package!

I saw it all in slow motion and all along I was telling myself "Okay Ned, Okay Ned, it's too late to take your camera and aim at the scene... But wait, it's still going on... and on.. and on..." I was realizing that I could have shot the whole thing only if I took my camera from the bag, which I never did.

I was stupid.
 
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