The Yellow Car
This will always be a sentimental photo to me, as it significantly changed how I think about street photography—and it happened completely by chance.
Most street photographers will tell you that if you spend an entire day out shooting and come home at the end of it all with only one good shot, one keeper, then it was a good day. There are times when you get home with zero shots or at least none that you’re happy with. Street photography is tough. You get one microsecond to capture a moment, one chance, one opportunity. Wait, sorry, quoting Eminem isn’t part of the story. Good song though. ANYWAY, I was walking the streets of Philadelphia, just another day, hoping to get at least one good shot, and I hadn’t so far. A few blocks up the street from where I was walking, there’s a cafe, painted black with yellow doors. Nothing was inherently interesting or uninteresting about it, but I took notice. At that very moment, a yellow car with a yellow tricycle on its roof passed me on the street. My eyes went wide. I saw the composition in my head; I had to have it. I started running. I felt like Forrest Gump because, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, I can run like the wind, at least when a once-in-a-lifetime shot is at risk of never happening. The car got caught at a red light directly across from the cafe, giving me some time to catch up, but that didn’t last long. The light turned green as I reached the cafe, and the car began to move again. I hadn’t even stopped running yet; that’s how fast this was all happening. The composition was slipping away from me; I had barely gotten ahead of the car, and I felt it had already passed too far beyond the cafe. Still, I needed that shot, and I was out of time. I turned and dropped to one knee, lifted the camera to my eye, and without hesitation pressed the shutter button. As quickly as I hit that shutter button, the car had moved out of the frame. The moment was over, the composition gone. I checked my camera, and I got the shot. Even more surprising to me was that I was happy with the shot. In the end, I had no choice in the composition or framing; all I could do was take the picture, but the result was perfect.
I’ve always kept my head on a swivel while doing street photography, for safety and also because I never want to miss a shot. But now, I also look for details, colors, patterns, something mobile that perfectly pairs with something immobile. Moments that only last for a second. More than that, what are the odds of being in a certain place, at a certain time, exactly when a moment like that happens? What are the odds of being able to take a picture, a good one at that? But it happens. Isn’t that amazing?
