As pro photographer Bill Bachman explains, sometimes the most memorable images are the ones that come about by accident.
I often liken photography to farming. This is especially true of stock photography, where seeds are planted speculatively and the resulting crop is sent off to market, hopefully to produce a return. The outcome is often dependent on careful strategy, and the whole process requires foresight, attention to detail, and not a little good faith.
Continuing the horticultural theme, sometimes the professional’s approach is even more formal – like, say, landscape architecture or garden design. Examples are commercial studio photography, where images are usually made to a blueprint for a specific purpose, and art photography, where a personal aesthetic is the unifying factor.
At other times, however, photography is more like hunting and gathering, a much more random pursuit where serendipity rules. While all of the above ways of working are part of my personal experience to a greater or lesser degree, it’s interesting that almost all of my best-known (and by coincidence, favourite) images were taken fleetingly, spontaneously.
The moment happened, and then it was gone. Yet somehow these images continue to resonate long after any other carefully planned and meticulously executed images have faded. I’d go so far as to say that most of us who have been in the game for a long time would admit that our very best pictures were in fact never “taken” at all. Seen, but not taken.
Late one afternoon toward the end of April 2006 I was wandering around the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, enjoying the autumn air and scouting for pictures. Opened in 2001, the much-photographed building itself is great subject matter, with a huge rollercoaster-like loop framing the main entrance and tilted, curving external walls of anodised aluminium embossed with messages in Braille.
That afternoon I made a number of really interesting – and deliberate - pictures, but the one that really stands out is the unplanned one featured here. A number of people were gathered at a bus stop outside the museum, and the play of their silhouettes and shadows on the burnished panels of the entryway were keeping me happily occupied.
Just as I was about to move on, I noticed three red-robed monks coming out of the museum and moving toward the area where I was working. As they walked past I took several frames of all three, but the final one included only the last monk, framed in a notch of the walkway and separated from the shadows of the people standing out of shot. A simple moment in which fine architecture was transformed by human presence – and this time successfully captured.
Article first published in Australian Photography, January 2010.
Photo by Bill Bachman. (Canon EOS 1Ds MkII with Canon EF17-40mm f/4L zoom @ 40mm. 1/80 sec @ f/4, ISO 200. RAW capture processed in Adobe Lightroom 2.)