Life happens. What I mean by that is sometimes if you blink you missed something and if you miss it it’s gone forever. The same goes when you take photographs; which I’ve learned the hard way over the years.
Sure you can reset it if you can, most of the time that’s a plausible notion… what’s impossible is that the pose will never be the same simply because the first time you saw the pose or movement it was natural, now it’s staged.
In 2009 I was staging a “career choice” project with my niece. We were mocking a commissioned “Coca-Cola” pinup ad shoot. I was the photographer, she was the project manager. It was her job to tell me, the photographer, what the client wanted and it was my job to shoot it. Despite the fact the shoot was a mock up, I had to shoot real photos because she would have to turn them in with her report – just as my studio would do for the client.
After about an hour to an hour and a half of shooting we were on our last pose. The model was kneeling down with one knee on the ground, the other leg posed foot flat to the ground. We were shooting in my house studio, so my dog was in the room watching.
We did everything we could to keep him from photo bombing the shoot. We were feeding him pizza in order to distract him; but after a few bites we didn’t want to upset his stomach. So we stopped feeding him the pizza and just sat back to see what he would do.
My niece and I were reviewing the photos, the model still posed in that kneeling stance when my dog decided to join the action. He walked under the model’s leg that was posed and sat down. I glimpsed up from my camera to see him sitting there perfectly posed.
I quickly told the model to hold up the soda bottle and pose. She did as she was told and I looked back into my camera and took a fast snap. What I got was timeless.
This photo was so perfect that I had to submit it to Coca-Cola themselves. They enjoyed the photo so much that they displayed it at their head quarters in Atlanta. I put that photo on my new Facebook fanpage and it landed me a photo shoot with Willow, the model in Death To Yesterday. That photo was one of my most profound pictures of which soared my work into a gallery in Hong Kong and news papers across the Tampa Bay area. In 2011 I submitted that photo to an art contest at Artistic Studio 30 in Tarpon Springs. There that photo won “Best in Show” as chosen by the patrons.
It’s amazing how one second longer of not paying attention and I would never have had that photo. Looking back at all the doors that photo opened, I sometimes wonder would I still have had the success I experienced? Would I have the passion I do for my art photos? I have no answer for those questions.
What I do know is that I am thankful I was paying close attention to the shoot because opportunity struck and was gone as fast as I blinked. I’ve learned to never take your eyes off the project till it’s done.
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