I'm Sorry. Did I Ruin Your Picture?

I've decided I need to hire an assistant. Someone to stand just out of camera range, instructing people to ignore me. “Ignore him. He’s just a photographer wanting to make a photograph of the tree’s shadows with your shadow cast across it. Just ignore him,” they would yell. Their intensity? Like an Elizabethan town crier warning that the King is coming. Only, in reverse.

“Don’t try to avoid him. Walk straight ahead at a normal pace. You’re not in the way. You are the way. Keep moving. Thank you,” would be the final instruction.

If there had been an assistant early this afternoon, I would have made this photograph must sooner. The greater majority of the possible shadow subjects avoided me and my camera and would have avoided the sidewalk if it had been possible to strategically float around or over it and me.

It’s too late to yell “I wanted a photo of your shadow in the tree’s shadow” when they’ve already sped past avoiding where the camera was pointed. First, I sound like a fool yelling an explanation of what I’d hoped would have been a transcendental moment layering organic shapes against the more rigid shadow of the human figure. Attempting to create a photo with a visual dialogue between the man-made environment and the natural world.

Sometimes they apologize. “I’m sorry. did I ruin your picture?”

“Yes! By thinking you were interfering instead of recognizing you were the primary factor. You are/were the most important part of the composition and you moved away, out of the frame.”

One of the challenges photographers have is making subjects understand their importance in the storytelling. In the composition. In the action. Getting that understanding to a pedestrian passing through the composition is next to impossible.

Unless you have an assistant with a town crier voice.

Now hiring.

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My Final Photo News also recommends Civic Capacity and Into the Morning by Krista Steele.