One Take for this Photographer, and he Couldn’t Have Imagined the Outcome.

In this digital age, billions of images are snapped, shared, posted, and deleted perhaps daily around the globe. In the late 1950’s, producing an image was cumbersome and relatively expensive. In this particular instance, I’d like to say my role in this immaculate obstruction, was as unlikely as the Franco Harris ‘Immaculate Deflection’ years later which devastated me as a Raider’s fan.

I was a mischievous third grader in 1959 at a small Northern California K-3 school, MacGregor School in Albany to be exact. My mother helped out with the Brownies after school, leaving me to my own devices in the school yard as I waited for her to finish her volunteer work.

This one particular day, the Brownies were gathered on the asphalt playground waiting to have their group photo taken. A distinguished looking gentleman arrived and set his large camera on top of a tripod on the west side of the playground. With his back to the bright California sun, he ducked underneath his black shroud, and began dialing in his focus, shutter, and aperture settings.

Myself, bored and possessing a rubber kickball to entertain myself, waited impatiently on the south end of the playground, well away from the giddy girls in their brown uniforms.

The photographer motioned and called out to the Brownies to gather. He methodically positioned the girls and retreated back to his tripod. Repeatedly ducking in and out of his black covering, he used hand gestures and verbal commands to fine tune the position of his subjects.

Finally, maybe fifteen feet from the group, he told them to stay still, as he was ready. He again disappeared, leaned forward behind his tripod, ready for his take. I had grown tired of waiting.

I turned towards the gathering, and with a solid punt, angled the kickball in the direction of the Brownies. A succession of bounces ensued, and the bounding ball perfectly split the corridor between the photographer and the Brownies. No harm, no foul.

Two weeks later, the latent image had been transformed, reproduced, and distributed to the parents. Sitting at the dinner table, my mom looked at me.

“You know that ball you kicked. It ended up blocking out a couple of the Brownie’s faces in the photograph.”

It took effort to keep from cracking a smile, and unfortunately, I never got to see the fluky photo. The poor photographer, had no peripheral perspective, and the moving obstruction eluded his view. He was stuck with one take. Hopefully I didn’t cause him much grief.

Oddly enough, as the one responsible for a marred image early in life, I landed at Eastman Kodak for 29 years, making sure commercial images, both film-based, and digital, were devoid of any imperfections.