Missed Opportunity--Rebecca Banks

Missed opportunities are the moments that stick with every photographer. They happen everyday, and they don’t care whether you happen to have your camera with you or not. They are the moments that can be over in a mere second, but they nestle themselves into the back of our minds forever. Once you’ve experienced a missed opportunity, it sticks with you forever. Either subconsciously or not, every time we go out to take photographs those missed moments shape the new moments we choose to capture. We are forever looking for the thing that we missed. Missed opportunities can often be the influence for the aesthetic choices of our future photographs. The image itself may now be different, but the general spirit or idea within the photo can be the same. Missed opportunities are what keep photographers on our toes. These missed moments keep us engaged in the world around us. Having experienced a lost moment and knowing it could always, and almost definitely will, happen again, is what keeps us looking, keeps us seeing. As much as these moments suck, for lack of a better word, to experience, we need them. They are often a key factor in the creation of something new, something unique, something different, and if we always found these moments so easily, we would lose that drive and that individuality.