Serendipitous Photography

I guess that when you take as many pictures as I do you tend to discover great approaches really by accident. Not to say that good photography doesn't require thinking about the end result and doing the right things that will get you there. But sometimes great things just happen. Like this photo of the boys.

I wanted an unencumbered background. The sky works good for this sort of thing, especially at perfect light. Perfect light is a few minutes after sunset. So I positioned the boys against the blue sky and a few clouds. The light in their face wasn't great because they were facing east, while the sun had just gone down in the west. I was asked to take this photo just moments before and didn't have a lot of time locating a good spot. We were just out on the front lawn. I posed them as I wanted. Then I set out to work.

I took a few bad pictures that I won't show you here. I wasn't satisfied with any of them. Mainly because the shutter was so slow. This blurred the guys. I kept shooting thinking that I could hold the camera still enough for a good shot. I was loosing light fast and didn't have time to get the tripod. After each picture I'd look at the screen on the back of the D70 to see if I got what I wanted. After several frustrating shots, one image looked great. Why was it so different than the others?

Then it struck me. While I was shooting, others with digital cameras liked the look and began snapping pictures. One of them just so happened to shoot while my shutter was open. Using their light and my camera we got a decent shot. It's a little ghosty but I like the look.

So there you have it. Shooting slow and having someone else flash their digital works for a good picture. No tripod, no flash from my camera. A kind of digital symbiotic relationship going on here.

Cool.

...dave
"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes." -Frank Lloyd Wright