Photos We Got, Got Away #1of2

Most travelers have photos they think are extraordinary. We do of course, and among them is a sharp-focused hand-held time exposure of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées, while dodging busy traffic on a rainy Friday evening. Another, with the bright sitting sun hid behind a lamp post, shows Big Ben and Westminster Hall in silhouette across the Thames River, beyond a silhouette of the statue of a lion, and street lamps, in front of London’s City Hall.

Our photo of the 250 year old Benedictine Abbey, with a beautiful Baroque façade, that is the Villeroy and Boch headquarters on the Saar River in Mettlach, Germany, brought this comment in a letter from Herr Wendelin Von Boch, “I have never seen such a good photograph of the Ancient Abbey.”

For our first ride on a vaporetto we crossed and recrossed the Lagoon between Lido Island and St. Mark’s Square, spellbound by the boats, the unique “street” scenes, with the lights of buildings with roof advertisements, reflected in the Venetian waters. By hindsight, after seven trips with sixteen nights and twenty-some days in this glorious city, that hand-held time-exposure snapshot from a moving boat, shows the sight we have remembered best.

One early spring we snapped Yosemite Falls and its reflection in river-overflow waters from the melting snow in Yosemite Valley. And of course I have a favorite photo of my beautiful wife Emmy, and thousands of photos more.

But there are always the ones that got away.

In the little town of Nagycenk, Hungary we saw a family of storks perched on the roof of a large building. The babies and mama were in the nest and papa proudly stood at the other end of the building. With the camera in hand, we slowly drove down the side-street to try for a good photograph. When we saw three eight- to ten-year-old school girls walking along the street, just for fun I casually pointed the camera their way.

But I was frozen in my seat as these girls sprang in the air with arms, legs, lunch pails, school books, and pigtails flying in all directions, just like a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover. They were thrilled their picture had been taken, and we were so disappointed my finger was motionless, I hadn’t snapped that picture.

A similar situation occurred while we were visiting Martinsburg, PA, where I lived years ago. We were following an Amish family in their horse-drawn buggy, and in the back of the buggy were four tow-headed, sleeping children, sitting in an arrangement that can be best described as in a “baseball diamond” — home-plate and the three bases. Just beyond were the parents and the horses. The pose could not have been better if it had been planned. Wouldn’t you know it, our camera was in the trunk. We mentioned this to friends who lived in the area, and they said they had seen the same family, in the same pose.