Missed Opportunity

This entry could be titled the one that got away.  Just like the fish that got away, the image not captured is always the biggest or best or most insightful. 

Yesterday, I made a trip to the transfer station.  When I was growing up it would have been a trip to the dump.  In today’s world we are separated from the dump, we aren’t allowed to enter into the dump.  Instead we are directed to follow the signs to the transfer station.  Then we are further directed to follow traffic lane 2 or  lane 1. Then we are assigned a numbered slot to back the truck into, where we unload by tossing the load of rubbish over the railing.  Below, a large dark gray armored bulldozer machine moves back and forth pushing trash around.  Gone is opportunity to forage around at the edges of the dump to searching out discarded treasures or to aim a weapon at the rats.  Anything that might be a discarded treasure is quickly crushed and shoved aside.

But I digress. 

The picture that didn’t get made yesterday would have been the ultimate in political commentary.  There below me, as I was tossing junk over the railing, was a fallen yard sign urging me to vote for last year’s losing mayoral candidate. 

Some of my own junk landed on that sign.  Moments later the sign was gone, mixed in with all the other trash being shoved off to be loaded for transfer to the dump.  A missed opportunity passed away below me.

But alas, I had made the decision a few moments earlier when I was backing the loaded rental truck down the driveway, to leave the camera sitting on the desk.  I had considered stopping to go back inside to gather it up but concluded, no, there won’t be anything I would want to picture before getting back to the house.

But I missed that decisive moment as the sign disappeared.  I could only watch as that behemoth machine below me, indifferent to what might be in its path, came to push around and finally cover and crush that sign beneath more and more junk and trash. 

I missed the chance to demonstrate mastery of lessons learned from last week’s photo workshop with Sam Abell.  The image exists only in my mind as a recollection.  It is less of a story when I try to reproduce it in words.  But it would have been a wonderful story, if only.