Good fortune

Sam Turner sat at a stylish café sipping his espresso carefully while surveying the other customers and the equally stylish pedestrains. This was the high life. He had spent the better part of his career in “shit holes” and now the years of crap and horror had paid of nicely. He reflected on the “anonymous” tip that had lead to his fortune. “Be at the Rehas in an hour… and wait”. And so with out much anticipation he waited, as he had done a million times before, for something to happen.

He stood on the hot street, camera ready, he saw familiar face. Not a person he knew personally but a face he had memorised for this tour. The man walked by with a woman in tow. She, in turn, was pulling a reluctant child behind her. The man wore a smartish western style suit, the woman, the local garb. He decided to give his camera a test run, the auto aperture had been playing up lately, he should have had it fixed weeks ago.

Manually pulling focus while in tight zoom on the back of the mans head and then gently widening shot. The exposure control was working perfectly. BLAM. His professional instincts took over, hold steady, wait for the dust and debris to dissipate, look (good I am not hurt). It was a messy explosion. His attention was drawn to the shape of the child sitting on the road side many meters from the initial blast, lower left field but still in shot. He zoomed in as the boy fell to the road.

Syndicated on fifty networks across the globe, Single frames on hundreds of front pages. His agent had done magic. Two weeks later and he was a rich (relatively) and independent (most definitely) man. The accolades were nice but the cash was much much better.