two moments

[Pherdinand]

this morning, i was walking on a corridor (?) between two of our university buildings. There's a little smokers' corner on the way, two guys were sitting down with some coffee, some cigarettes. And then, bang, one of them spilled his full cop of coffee on the table his papers his pants and everything around. They both jumped up a bit and made very worrying faces. 😱 Round mouth saying ooo, eyebrows up to the ceiling. (The coffee was hot.) I thought immediatelly: darn, if i'd have had a camera ready! (i had a TLR in my backpack:bang: .) First moment missed.

Then I made one more step, and the second guy started to laugh out loud with a really honest big grin. The one with the spilled coffee was still with a very painful feeling on his face. They were like the pair of traditional comedy-tragedy masks, very expressive.
Second moment missed.
🙁

Any similar "missed shot" feelings, lately?

 

[Pherdinand]

That should read "full CUP of coffee", not "cop", of course 😀

 

[bmattock]

Life is full of those moments in time! I wish they could be put back again, but all we can do is sigh and move on. Sometimes they get caught on film - like the Sailor kissing the woman in Times Square at the end of WWII. That was a moment like yours!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Sorry, Pherdinan, but I must disagree with this notion of a "decisive moment." When it comes to photographing, I try to capture photos that I could show to the people I photographed, without embarrasing them.

Sure, the expressions must have been great, but had it happened to you and somebody had taken your photo, would you be cheerful enough to appreciate the good photographic moment you provided?

Again, I didn't mean to sound preachy, but, like you, I've seen some pretty intense moments, had thoughts along the same lines... and only later realized it wouldn't have made photographic history.

Now... if you were a journalist... That'd be a completely different story! Then a shot of the distorted, upset faces would have been news.

But then, again, do we need to exploit other people's suffering to enhance the news reports?

 

[Pherdinand]

I thought already that somebody will bring up this, Solares🙂 Why? because I had my own doubts. However, i concluded that spilling a cup of coffee happens to everyone, it's not the end of the world. So, yes, i'm sure the guy was really angry, but he should have "recovered" pretty fast and that would make it safe for me to show him the picture.
But indeed, if i was taking a picture and he'd have noticed it, in that state he would not have appreciated it😀 So maybe i should be happy that i did not have a camera!
"But then, again, do we need to exploit other people's suffering to enhance the news reports?" -Definitely not.

 

[Pherdinand]

"and only later realized it wouldn't have made photographic history" -Yes, i'm not sure at all that it would have been a succesful photo, -but hey, when in doubt, shoot! 😉

 

[Doug]

Pherdinand, you can certainly enjoy the moment and treasure the memory of the facial expressions. A couple pictures would be nice too, sorry it was missed!

But as a teenager I had boiling hot coffee spilled on my leg by accident, and it was a serious matter. The hot liquid was held against my skin by the soaked blue jeans, and I had some bad burns. I still have the scars from the huge blisters. :-( I hope in your story it wasn't so bad.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Pherdinand, when you use one's own words to reply... it just shows you're too smart for your own good! 😀

I liked it!

Sorry if I sounded too preachy. All I wanted was to make you aware of the odd fact that one man's great shot is another man's awful struggle. Some of the photos I used to view as great street images are the kind that would embarrass the people pictured in them; I took them down from the online gallery where I posted them when a seasoned street photographer told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was being... "unkind" to my subjects.

I'm glad you already had seen this idea coming! That means that if you had taken the shots you wanted, we would have never seen them because you would have realized that they weren't the subjects' best moments in life.

Have fun shooting!