Imagine that you had been planning a particular shot for a few months. The time was right – or so you thought – so you went to photograph it. Just as you were just finishing you turned around and saw another shot that you hadn’t noticed before. “Wow. I’d like to shoot that one!”
Let’s say that you figured that a focal length of about 100mm would be right for it so you reached into your bag and pulled out a lens to replace the lens that was on the camera. After attaching this lens something seemed odd when you looked through the viewfinder; the subject seemed a lot smaller than you expected. Undismayed you zoom in but can’t get “close” enough. But then you think, “Hey, wait. I kinda’ like the way it looked zoomed out.” So you shoot at the wide end anyway. You finish and put your camera away – and realize that instead of shooting at 100mm you were shooting at 17mm. Wrong lens. And you didn’t even notice. Sheesh.
You get home and go through the photos from the day’s shoot – and this oddball 17mm shot seems to get your attention. In fact, by the time you are done it not only seems like the best shot of the day but perhaps one of the better photographs that you’ve made recently.
By accident. As the result of a dumb mistake.
Would you admit this? Neither would I.
George, thanks for sharing that – and great photograph of the children in the schoolyard.
Truth be told, far more photographs than many would like to admit have stories like this behind them. (One famous example: Ansel Adams’ famous “Moonrise” photo…)
Not that it actually happened to me this way. No. Certainly not… ;-)
Dan
Something like this happened to me also. Actually, it didn’t have anything to do with my camera’s lens, but more to do with looking to just finish out my roll of infrared film so that I could get back to where I was staying and swap it out for a fresh roll. I talk about it at http://glsmyth.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/26/ and the result ended up with one of my favorite images I’ve ever shot, displayed at http://glsmyth.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/fifteen-lads-and-a-lass-say-cheese/.
Sometimes a situation we had not planned can result in an unexpected opportunity to succeed in an area we might not have considered otherwise.