Getting lucky

Posted by Gordon King on Oct 30, 2011 | Comments Off

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

That means simply being in the right place at the right time.

The situation: it’s Monday morning. We have a main story but no photo to go with that story for Tuesday’s front page.

We need a local photo for Tuesday’s front page.

Because of other assignments I’ve got three, maybe four, hours to find a photo to carry the front page.

Our readers love photos of autumn colors – I get phone calls every fall telling me of particularly colorful trees I should photograph.

So autumn colors it is. While the trees are turning here in town I figured the best colors would be further west, up towards the mountains where the autumn colors are already on full display.

Not knowing what I would see and when, I photographed my way up Highway 410.

My first photo:

Semi-artistic but not very compelling. Certainly not good enough to carry the front page and entice readers into the newspaper. But I had to start somewhere I needed at least some photo, even a bad photo.

Further west I saw this:

I like this photo better. The red tree, highlighted against the dark background and contrasting with the golden-colored tree in the background. I’ve driven by this tree for many years and always thought about photographing it.

This photograph is better than the first. The lighting and bright red colors could possibly carry page one. I’d have to do a serious sales job at our afternoon news meeting but I figured I could talk the other editors into running the photo.

But I wanted better, something would which could stand on it’s own and wouldn’t need a full-on sales pitch (I try to ration those pitches).

Further west, I photographed fall leaves in the foreground against fall leaves in the background.

I used a flash to highlight the foreground leaves but the flash didn’t have enough poop to accomplish my idea.

Running out of time I headed back toward town knowing I had at least the red-leaf tree photograph.

Then I saw a car parked beside the Naches River. That usually means someone is fishing nearby.

And I got lucky.

The fisherman was in the right place, silhouetted against the water with brightly-colored trees in the background.

This was a photo I knew would be a hit with the editors and the readers. I wasn’t able to get the fisherman’s name because he was too far away and the river’s current was too loud for me to shout over.

It felt good knowing I had met the challenge and gotten a decent photo for the next day’ front page. It doesn’t always happen but on this day I got lucky.

–Gordon King