I have said how important it is to plan what and where to shoot in order to create an photo with impact. Well most of the time that is true. I also believe photographers should always have a camera close by if we’re not carrying one.
Several years ago my wife and I were on a weeks vacation at a cabin on lake One (partially in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area), Our mission that week was total relaxation which meant NO WORK. We had this cabin for seven days and we were doing nothing but enjoying our time. The cabin had these white plastic chairs and each cabin at the resort had it’s own dock, So we had taken two of the chairs down to the dock so we could take in the different moods of the lake over the week. Well our time went by and we were packing up to leave and we remembered that the chairs were still on the dock so I went to get them and saw an image I just had to make. I ran back to the car and grabbed for a camera and started making images only to realize that I had my wife’s camera I thought for a moment about switching to one of mine but I decided not to because the fog was lifting so I just kept making images, after all we were shooting the same film that summer.
The resulting image has been one of our top sellers year in and year out since then. I’m not convinced that if we had tried to stage this image or do variations with the chairs it would have worked very well. Some times there is a great merit in the grab shot and I try to encourage people to keep their camera’s close by at all times.
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