Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, until it isn't
- Aug 16
- 3 min read
When someone says that quote, it reminds me of one photo every time. That photo would be Joel Meyerowitz's "Fallen Man, Paris, France".
This photo is the epitome of preparedness for me. A moment captured just in time, in a busy Parisian street of 1967. Did the man fall several minutes ago? The gasping faces of bystanders and pedestrians suggests otherwise — a bicyclist even turned his head around to look! Yet, the handyman next to the fallen pedestrian is nonchalantly walking over him. I often remember this when I think of the quintessential "decisive moment".
A close second is the bicyclist photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Hyères, France". I look at these photos and wonder, how prepared must these photographers have been in the day when there was no auto mode to choose from, with sunny sixteen probably memorized in their head way before they set out to take pictures that day.
Cartier-Bresson's contact sheet sheds some light on his compositional technique, this is an example of "fishing", where you precompose and wait for the subject to come into frame. Both the photos, Meyerowitz's and Cartier-Bresson's are examples of everything going right in the frame — preparation truly meeting opportunity.
But there are moments when some photos miss a mark, just almost right, but that becomes the je ne sais quoi needed to set them apart. Some time late last year in October, I happened to take a photograph that was almost just right.
One day, I got a message from my friend Joe Griffin. His friend, a Batman cosplayer, was visiting from Houston (@BatmanInHouston). Joe was planning to rally up some photographer friends and photograph his friend. Mr. Batman likes the city of Chicago because Christopher Nolan shot the Dark Knight trilogy in this city, and he would love to get photographed here. Joe had a spot for one more photographer. I promptly said yes, dropping any and all other plans I had that evening.
Several photographers and one Batman roamed around Chicago downtown that night, starting from Michigan Avenue in River North, walking south to the riverwalk, and then to some alleyways in the heart of the Loop. At one point, we decided to make Mr. Batman walk down an escalator on a red line station on State Street, with 10 photographers pointing their camera looking down to capture the silhouette of the caped crusader as he came up standing menacingly on the escalator stairs. I struggle with multi-photographer photowalks, so, to be the contrarian, I decided to not look head down on the escalator but instead stand on the side of the station exit, hoping to capture him from a different angle.
I only had a few moments to get a photo of him from this side, as he would quickly exit the metro station. I was shooting with my trusty Canon EOS 70D. The camera, albeit great, doesn't have the latest and greatest auto-focus technology. I was also shooting with a nifty-fifty lens, which has a wide aperture resulting in a narrow, thin depth-of-field. As he came up the escalator, I quickly fired up a few photos. And I completely missed focus. My camera, instead of focusing on the obvious subject, decided to land on the pane of glass between us. The focal plane went directly onto the reflection of the marquee lighting up the Chicago Theater.
I'm convinced that it was this missed focus that makes the photograph sing. It gives the correct atmosphere for the Batman, and strengthens his presence, even though it's blurry and in shadows. Later that night, I requested to try that shot again, this time with the dark knight in focus. Those photos didn't have the same punch as the first attempt. Some times, good luck is working against your best intentions. Had all the shots been in tack focus, the feeling that the first photograph invoked would have been lost.
About a month ago, they released a new teaser for Robert Pattinson's The Batman II. When I saw it, it instantly reminded me of the photo I took last year. Feels oddly validating, maybe Greg Freiser and I thought alike for one moment? Haha, one can hope.
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