Greatest photos you never took

[jpb]

I was recently flying back from Florida and getting on the plane I

saw a sign on an electrical panel that read "Service by QAULIFYED

technicians only." My camera was in my backpack on my back and not

immediately accessible. Then, as we began our initial descent to New

York, I was looking out the window (rather than snapping photos out

the window as I often do) and lightning struck the wing about 10 feet

from my face... my camera was stowed in the overhead compartment.

 

What great images have you seen that you never had a chance to

capture?

[fk319]

I have two young children and live in the country, so there have been many missed photos. But I must say that many of the moments, I just put the camera away and enjoy them with my wife.

 

That said, my large dog came in last winter after playing in the streem in front of the house. She had a sheet of ice all over her and my wife had to blow dry our dog before she came into the house. I still tease my wife about not taking a picture first.

[daniel_ob]

I do not believe in short run projects (several weeks or months). I work on projects years, on several of them at the same moment. So I do not hury. I prefer to study to the bottom and shoot. Walking the street I see so many things nice and bad worth to record on the film. Just sometimes I take a camera and try to record it. I am not crazy for photography, and photography means nothing to me. I like objects and tones on it. If I could get on my drawings blur, sharpness, tones, truthfulness and extreme exactness, which are feature of photography, I will might be sell my cameras. So for me is the most important to -see- things but not neccessary to record them. I enjoy to see my nice pictures but I enjoy the same way to see it outside. Now I can say there are countless large number of nice picture I never captured I will never ever regret it. Sometimes I refuse to take it just of background, but with eye only I can ignore the background....

[jean_marc_liotier]

Sometimes you have to choose where you want to stand. When holding a camera I feel I am no longer part of the scene, I become an external observer. So often I just lay down the camera so that I can fully take part in what is happening. I miss great pictures but at least I don't miss these parts of my life...

[William Kahn]

One year ago, My wife and I were returning to Arizona after a Christmas visit with relatives in Pennsylvania. The weather was crappy, alternating rain and fog. As we crossed the Mississippi River at St. Louis on I70 (she was driving), I looked to the right and saw the most fantastic, surreal, most perfect B&W shot: Fog-shrouded river, a tug pushing a line of barges down stream, eerily framed by the river banks, and the next bridge to the north emerging from the fog. Where's the camera? In its hard case in the trunk. The main problem, though, was no place to stop, no way to turn around. (If you've ever driven in St. Louis traffic, you understand what I mean.) Anyway, my wife finally got tired of hearing me whine about the Missed Perfect Shot, so I thought I'd do it here. After all, it is the first anniversary....

[noreen]

There was a very small local "street fair" (as folks in a bigger town might call it) last

summer, and a news crew consisting of a cameraman and a news reporter had been sent

out from a Portland (Maine) TV channel to cover it. I never saw a smile on the

cameraman's face -- he looked quite dour, but never so dour as when, set up in the

middle of the street, he was rushed by a heard of pre-teen boys on skateboards and on

foot, jumping and generally mugging for the camera. He looked so unhappy, and the boys

were obviously having the time of their life. I had my camera in hand but the action was

so fast -- the stampede lasted a second or two and then they were gone -- that there was

no realistic way for me to have caught it.

 

Had I caught on film as I did in memory the expression of the man and the exhiliaration of

the one boy who did some kind of gymastic split-jump before the camera, it would have

been a demonstrable "decisive moment." (I even had b&w loaded, too!)

[cameron_rautmann___holt__m]

Happened just last week. My daughter (9) got her finger stuck in a hole of a shower drain cover. It went in past the knuckle and I tried everything to get it off. Took her to the emergency room and the doctor said she wished she had a camera to capture the moment. Doh! Would have never thought of that. I keep thinking of all the precious moments I could show this at- her graduation, wedding, grandkids...

[steven nelson]

Walking by what turned out to be a jail in Tijuana, Mexico. Guard with machine gun opens jail door and stops me on the sidewalk. Another guard leads a group of men shackled and chained together out the door across the sidewalk and into a waiting truck. A number of other guards with machine guns come out to secure the area around the truck. It was quite a scene and I had my camera around my neck. Unfortunately the guard in front of me looked quite serious so I decided to play it safe.

[ben_kriete]

A few weeks ago we had our first really cold weather of the year - two or three nights in a row that were well below zero (f). The trees along the Connecticut River on my way in to work in the morning were covered with the whitest, most beautiful frost I have ever seen, and the sky was an incredible blue. Unfortunately, no camera, and me being late enough for work to begin with conspired against me and I will just have to remember how beautiful it was and drive to work the next cold Saturday morning we get.

[michaelging]

Many years ago I was listening to a scanner and heard that a truck had over turned on the freeway. When I arrived, I was on the frontage road and could see the overturned truck below me . It was a Magazine truck and there were bundles of magazines all over the freeway. Off to the side were 2 police officers ,holding up a Playboy magazine ,with the centerfold hanging down as they examined the evidence. I did take the photo and thought about turning it in to the paper ,but decided I would not. I did make a copy of it and sent it to the police agency's PIO ,with a note saying this was a present.

 

Many years later after the PIO retired, he was working as the person in charge of Security of a movie company making a movie here in Arizona (Midnight Run) with Robert DeNiro.Mr. DeNiro hated the media and did not want his photo taken. This unnamed PIO,told me to get into the car with out telling me why, drove me right up to where they were shooting a scene, rolled down my window, let me get the shot I wanted of Mr DeNiro and as we drove off told me I was paid back in full for my present. I was

[brian_teufel]

All my greatest photos haven't been taken yet.

[andrewpgrant]

I usually get stuck on the bus on the way home from school when the most amazing light peeks out from behind the clouds and everyone and everything around me look surreal and alive... short answer - there's a lot of them!!! :-)

[patrickconnolly]

Driving through rural North Carolina many years ago, foggy and misty afternoon. Rounded a curve and came upon a young girl riding on a large white horse. She stopped outside the wrought iron fence of a family cemetery and sat there for a moment looking at the graves. It was one of the most surreal moments and scenes I've ever encountered. Of course, my camera was at home.

[robert x]

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon in El Greco's house in Toledo, Spain, about 15 years ago, and took a whole roll (almost) of film, including a couple of what looked like great shots with the security guards looking vert dour indeed against the beautiful house. I decided to finish off the film by taking a few boring panoramic shots outside, and the counter clicked to 36, then 37, then 38 then 39...then I got worried and opened the camera to see my brand new unexposed film that hadn't caught the sprockets. Not done it since.....(touch wood)<div></div>

[KenPapai]

Jan. 3, 2006 -- this was the best sunrise on the Bay in a LONG time and I was stuck without a camera on the ferry boat. The SF Chronicle got it though; here is a crop from Frederic Larson's photo:<div></div>

[roger_hicks1]

Dear James,

 

A flooded landscape, with the water lapping at the wall around the edge of an empty swimming pool...

 

Since then I try to leave an old, ratty camera (a Yashica reflex with 50mm lens that I was given for nothing) in the storage compartment under the seat of the Land Rover.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[jaybee]

It was about thirty years ago. My mother and I were in New York for the bridal market. (Mom and Dad owned a bridal salon in Houston, Texas.) While going from one building to another, I saw a broken-down bakery truck with the driver under the hood trying to get his truck running again. He had his spare tire a few feet behind the truck as a warning to oncoming motorists. The tire was propped up with two loaves of French bread.

[josh_g__boston_]

Down in South America, a drunken post-bullfight mob was brewing and I noticed 4 police officers in full riot gear on the corner of the square. They were thumbing through a street vendor's supply of bootleg dvds. I didn't have the cajones to pull the camera then, but now I'm a bit quicker on my feet. They were framed by a simple, salmon colored wall and copies of an Adam Sandler movie.

[eugene_scherba]

Whileseated had started a <a href="http://www.unphotographable.com/">photoblog</a> on this.

[Brian]

<P>Everybody who's been into photography for any length of time has missed some good opportunities, but without the actual capture we'll never know if they would have been <I>great images</I>.</P> <P>Fishermen traditionally have the same problem - the "one that got away".</P>

[edgreene]

I carried a camera of some kind for most of my 32+ years as a PJ. I was never more than a reach or two from a loaded camera. <br>How many "missed" shots? A few, but my private portfolio is filled with "grab shots" I did take.<p>Anything "spectacular"? No, but plenty of shots that remind me of where I was and what I was doing, most of the shots marking milestones in my past.<p>One of the shots I <i>didn't</i> miss: shot during assignment watching building late evening Kansas Thunderstorms.<div></div>

[phyrpowr]

My parents, both gone over 25 years now, just doing everyday stuff

[icephoto]

South Coast of Iceland, late January/Early February. We (Wife, 3 Kids, and I) were staying in a cabin for the weekend trying to unwind a little bit. We had chased the kids inside and we were both enjoying a very healthy 7 & 7 in a 105ﾺF hot pot. As we looked up we saw the Aurora Borealis start to fire up. The lights were beautiful, there wasn't a bit of light pollution anywhere but from inside our cabin, and the moment with my wife was worth more than any image I could have shot.