Great candid photographs boil down to three things: The candid scene, having a camera to capture the scene (of course) and recognizing the scene—seeing it in your mind’s eye. Any camera will do. Cell phones have captured many amazing photos. The scene itself is luck or fortune or karma or coincidence. But the recognition, being able to visualize it with your mind’s eye, is the art.
One recent Saturday morning with camera over shoulder, I walked to our town’s nearby farmer’s market. I captured several shots that I think are pretty cool, but subjects for another blog. There were many roaming photographers. The fresh fruit and vegetables paparazzi. Content with these photos, I decided to walk towards the river for a Starbucks coffee and then head home. Here’s the luck part, at the last minute I decided to veer off to see if anything was worth photographing at the pier. It was early, but already hot and humid so not surprisingly the pier was fairly quiet. Leaving, I noticed a young woman struggling to raise a heavy umbrella in the outdoor seating area for a restaurant on the pier. After raising the umbrella she walked over to one of the large fans used to cool the seating area and…well, these photographs speak for themselves (I hope). Talk about life imitating art. It could have been a planned photo shoot, but it wasn’t.
Better to be lucky than good, indeed. Not sure that’s a song, however.