Among my many other failings and flaws, I am also a big hockey fan. It’s furiously fast, sometimes hard to follow, comes with hotdogs and beer and bursts of mayhem, and the occasional outbreak of fisticuffs. What’s not to love? And it has given us a quote that I conjure back up in my head almost every day, from the incomparable Wayne Gretzky: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. I get it.
Back when I was shooting film, especially 4x5 and 8x10, I was a lot more selective in my photographic decision-making. Sheet film was darn expensive for a kid making his living in the studio, but that’s not how it all began. Every week, for years, I’d bulk-roll hundreds of feet of 35mm film, Tri-X and Ecktachrome mainly, and shot so many pictures I thought my little Nikkormat would start smoking. The goal was obviously not to produce masterpieces for the museums, but to practice, process, and learn how to be selective when the time came.
What brings this all up is a casual statement made in passing by a young colleague. An excellent photographer in her own right, I was editing some of her photos. They were lovely, but she mentioned how there were some others that she might have taken (sunsets out on the coast) but didn’t, as she wasn’t sure they would look ok. Well, shoot. Now we’ll never know.
Les Petites Ballerines 2018