Take a Picture While You Can!

By PF Staff in Favorite Photos on Nov 20, 2012

This here is my favorite photo. Favorite photo because it is my most memorable shot. Most memorable, because it is my one shot that had so much history behind it. And this is the story...

It was a cold winter morning, Woke up early and walked to my parents bedroom to wake them up so they can give me a ride. It was always a habit for me to open their blinds and just to take a peek what golden treasure the windows held behind it every morning, night, rainy day, thunderstorm, etc. I swoop through the blinds and there I see it, a thin blanket of clouds just laying among houses. I ran back out of their room to mine, grabbed my camera and snapped multiples of this. Well 2-3 probably because It was a film camera, Didn't want to waste too much film on it. But man was I ever so excited to finish the roll, just for these shots. At the time, I was enrolled into a traditional photography class so we always developed our own film, and printed our own prints. When I was making a test strip of this, my teacher looked at where my enlarger was and said "Wow, that's a bitchin shot". I felt flattered. I felt that I didn't really deserve that compliment because I mean.. It really wasn't so hard to take that shot, I just had to open the blinds, grab the camera shoot. I believe that I'm just fortunate to have such a great view. Well anyways, I really wanted to make an 8x10 of it, my teacher agreed to help me. I came in early, I stayed after school. I went in during lunch. Just to perfect the picture; It took about lots and lots of test strips, and about 6 full prints to finally achieve the dodges and burns I wanted.

I shot this with a Canon Rebel 2000, I think... 18mm, B&W 400 Arista.
Post Processing; There was a bunch of dots. Everywhere. Then this was when my teacher introduced to me, inkblotting. I inkblotted a scratch, and a bunch of dots around the photo. I was pretty pleased with myself. I saw the spots, but they were hardly noticeable.

Okay, so here's what added to this being my favorite shot.
I printed this because It was for a contest my teacher informed the class about; "Beauty is...."
And people were allowed to submit any shape or form to resemble what they believe "Beauty is"
After I had printed the image, The negative was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the ground for it, turned on the lights. Asked several students, It was gone. There is now one and only one shot of this beautiful scene. And I have it, printed.
Anyways, 2 weeks later, I get an email saying that I won the contest and I get a certificate of photography saying that I won. Even though the certificated wasn't super fancy, I took it to heart. It made me feel good about myself.

The name of this entry was "Take A Picture While You Can"
That's one of my key morals to my photography. Like a sunset, That same shot that you had an opportunity to shoot before, isn't there. So never be lazy to take out your camera or lug your camera around everywhere....just Take a picture while you can. -steezylistic