Luck

In the spirit of Valentine's Day...

Photography is a lot about luck but it is also a lot about making your own luck.  I consciously try to put myself in situations and settings where something interesting will likely happen.  This works more often than not, but every once and a while a chance to capture an interesting image happens upon me when I least expect it.  For example, I just happened to be looking out my window at the apartment complex across the alley and noticed the couple depicted above experiencing an intimate moment.  She was obviously in distress and he was obviously comforting her and I was obviously being a little creepy.  What the hell, I had my camera handy so I proceeded to take pictures of them.

I wasn't photographing them with the intent of encroaching on their privacy, if you are visible in public you relinquish such luxuries, I was more interested in the way he was consoling her, the positioning of their hands, and how far away from a subject my spiffy new camera could take a decent picture.  Well, the picture quality didn't turn out that great but as I was looking through the images later, I noticed something.  Romeo has a heart drawn on the back of his shirt.  What luck!  Even though they are not great images, I am a believer in serendipity and this image of love was telling me something..

I love these pictures because they came to me at a crucial time in my own life.  I had been single for almost a year after ending a three-year long relationship.  Whooey!  I know, that's a long time.  Relationships are exhausting and believe me, I was exhausted and needed a whole year to reenergize.  Anyway, the day I took these photos I realized that there were things about being in a relationship that I did miss.  I realized that I wanted small intimacies to be the realities of my life again some day, not immediately, but some day.  Reflecting on my previous relationship, I also realized that I had a lot of personal work to do before subjecting someone else to the idiocricies of my world.  Let's be real, it would take a crazy man to handle me.

Just like people, images do not always have to be perfect and they rarely are (and the more perfect they are the more we seem to resent them).  They do, however, have to be meaningful either to the photographer, the viewer, or both.  This photographic experience also reiterated for me that photography does not necessarily have to be about expressing the perfect message in the perfect way.  It can simply be about discovering new things for yourself.  And to think, this all happened because of a little good fortune and disregard for someone else's personal space.  Yup, only a crazy man...