the missed shot you can't forget

[JohnM]

I don't know if there's a photograph that I've missed that I regret, but there are two photographs that I took and just lost in the shuffle of moving or cleaning or whatever.

One was a picture of my brother in a row house we were renovating in D.C. It was just a great, great accidental picture - I didn't even know what I was doing, but I had a Konica C35 that someone had given to me and everything came together for this one photograph. (Literally, the first roll of film I ever took with a rangefinder camera - the C35 was gift from a friend who inherited it from his father. I eventually gave it to my brother.O

The other is a picture of my wife on the day we found out she was pregnant with our daughter. It was a completely forgettable shot, but it was a moment in time.

And I can't find either of them - I suspect I will eventually, but in the interim, I'm annoyed that I let them get out of safe keeping.

 

[ddunn]

Driving on Skyline Drive early in the AM on a stretch of road with a steep drop-off into a valley: a bald eagle riding a thermal came up about 10-12 feet away and glided parallel to the car on my side. He was in sunlight and the background hill and trees in shadow. We watched each other for a minute or two until a curve came up and he banked away.

The cameras sat snug in their bags in the trunk.

 

[Pherdinand]

It's ok, frank, don't worry🙂 i did find it funny.

 

[Catto]

I once took a bus to Ayers Rock, from Melbourne. For those who haven't done it, that's ~12h from Melbourne to Adelaide, then ~20h to this thing in the middle of the desert. (Then 20 more to Darwin, but that's beyond the end of this story.)

Put it this way, looking at a map of Australia you'd think Ayers Rock & Alice Springs were pretty much the same place (as I did before going over from Canada) - but no, they're about 3h apart.

Anyway - Canon T90 kit & lenses with me on the bus, decide to load the camera with colour film. I press rewind to get the old roll out, pop open the back just before it finishes (to keep the tail free to reload). Put my one & only roll of colour in, and...

It finishes rewinding.

The whole afternoon & sunset in the middle of the red desert, the big red rock, and I've got three shots left on a roll of BLACK & WHITE...

 

[aizan]

i forget them all eventually, but tonight a plastic bag floated over the windshield on the way back from steve's camera repair. i'd just dropped off the m2 for its first overhaul. and don't think it's like that part in "american beauty", because it wasn't!

 

[don sorsa]

Good stories, and I like Russ' point about photographic memories or else we wouldn't even be able to remember the missing moments, right? BUt allowing others to share them, that's a bit more complicated, eh?

My missed shot is exotic, for me anyway. My son Isaac, then 13, and I were in Zhaoqing, China and the square outside our hotel filled early every morning with several hundred people doing tao chi, rehearsing for fan dances, and various other exercises. The penultimate morning, I got Isaac up early and together we watched an incredible scene, all these people moving together individually and separately in small and large groups, on a public square that backed into a small lake that was surrounded by craggy hills and then low misty mountains. Sigh, yes, I have the memory of Isaac standing there, open-mouthed, bewitched by a scene from another world, and he has memories too, but I wish he also had photos to show his children and grandchildren.

I doubt there's any magic in the world, but there are magical moments that deserve visual preservation.... Whatever the heck THAT means! (Now I gotta remember to return to this thread and hope I don't get my b*** kicked.)

 

[stevew]

Memories and Visions

Memories and Visions

I have all these memories and visions of sights I've beheld, it's no wonder I get a little spacy sometimes. Then again, I was a teenager in the 60's.

 

[JoeFriday]

I'm a little funny in that I don't fret over missed shots of 'memories'.. I sometimes prefer not to have photo, because the image in my head can be better than what is printed.. but it's the artistic shots that I miss that get to me.. but that's my nature, and why I'm a graphic artist

 

[taffer]

He, many MANY lost shots 🙂

Fortunately I have to set up space in my mind for new things hence some old ones have to go and I tend to forget them. Anyway it could be a good exercise to take note of these lost moments, in some way that's another kind of photography...

 

[taffer]

This is my last one, if you look carefully behind that boxy thing you'll see what looks like... the edge of a bike wheel that I noticed was coming, this time both parallax and having both eyes open got me. Still not a very good photo even if I had got the bike in the background, and at least, I have a light through foliage bokeh test shot 😛