I've spent the last couple weeks going through some older coverages looking for specific photos that for some reason never made it into file. Sometimes I'd find the photos I was looking for and sometimes I'd find something unexpected. Here is a small series of photos I made waiting for a ferry to cross the Tsiribihina River in Madagascar.
The wait was long, the light was nice so I shot pictures of workmen hauling bags of rice from a small river boat to waiting trucks.
The photos have nothing to do with the story I was on. Honestly I had forgotten that I made them until I went back through the coverage earlier this week.
People often ask me why I save everything that I shoot. Why go through the expense of the RAID arrays and cataloging software to keep the images spinning and live? Why not just forget about images that did not make it into the original story?
Theses photos offer a pretty good reason. Even when editing a National Geographic story I am on tight deadline and there isn't much time to indulge in photos that are ancillary to the story. It can be months or even years before I've got the time to go back through the images.
If I've saved the pictures properly and have them in a way I can get to them easily rescuing photos like these is pretty simple.
Now for the big question. What photo was I actually looking for when I stumbled across theses? A head shot of the notoriously camera shy Neal Shea.
Sewanee, TN
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