They say serendipity plays a big part in a photographer’s life, so does listening to your inter-voice and luck. You’ll never know what you’ll run into when traveling to and another assignment.
While driving down the Long Lake Road on my way to Olalla to cover a Little League baseball game, I came across two kids, who had set up a lemonade stand along side the road. At the time it didn’t look too interesting, so I passed by. About a mile down the road, I had this gut feeling and an inter-voice told me to turn around and just hang out for a while. Paying attention to my instincts, I went back, parked the car, shot pictures while waiting for a carload of customers to appear. I didn’t want to get too close, so I used a 300mm lens to capture scenes from up the road, down the road and across the road of these two enterprising youngsters just sitting in the hot sun on the lonely stretch of road, waiting and waiting and waiting.
Sensing all I got was a bunch of pictures of them waiting for customers, I decided to walk back to the car and continue to the baseball game. Halfway to the car, I once again heard that inter-voice telling me to turn around. As I did, the boy got up from his chair, walked around to the front of the stand, hunkered down and helped himself to a drink. Just as he started to drink, I raised the camera, focused, pressed the shutter button, and captured one picture before the film started to auto rewind back into the film cassette. I couldn’t believe it, this was my final shot on a roll of 36-exposure film and I hoped I was able to capture the moment.
This also reminds me of what another fellow photographer once told me. “It’s 95 percent being there and 5 percent dumb luck.”
That is good stuff Jim.
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