POV: Missing The Right Moment

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

We all have had these missed moments...and I have a lot of those, especially when I do street photography in the streets of New York City.

This one illustrates one of such missed moments...the choreography of pedestrians which could've  worked perfectly if the gods had been smiling, but they didn't...they frowned.

I estimated the walking pace of these two Hasidim on Avenue A would perfectly frame the woman crossing it, and snapped my iPhone shutter at what I took to be the right moment . But was not to be. The partially obscured man on the left who had been about to cross the street, suddenly stopped at this precise moment behind the second Hasidim. Damn!

Perhaps I was too quick...and should've waited for just a second or so. I might have caught the second Hasidim's shadow on the pavement, and the man might have decided to cross.  Just look at the shadow in the center...it looks like a bird.

But realistically, it would've been too late to catch the woman exactly where I wanted.

I looked at the display and I said...damn!