Drive-by shooting

Section of Mulberry roadway from Operation Overlord, Gognies-Chaussée, France 2017.

Drive-by shooting

To take a photograph on the fly is like shooting from the hip while doing a drive-by; you’ve got to be quick, instinctively eyeballing it, no time for aiming. With a 24x36 analog film, there’s no room for mistakes, and those are a dime a dozen. So when you hit the mark, it’s astonishing. This time it’s all there, exactly right, the two ends of the Mulberrry bridge, the blurry grass that gives you speed, the road receding in the side view mirror, the mirror that responds to the trees in the opposite corner, for balance. One shot ! When you’ve achieved that, you can go ahead and blow on the end of your camera, spin it twice fast in your hand, before re-holstering it.