One of my favorite movies of all time is ‘The Usual Suspects.’ It had a great ensemble cast, a good story and excellent writing. Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won a well deserved Oscar for his script.
Aside from it being a violent drama with hardened criminals, there were several scenes that were quite funny.
The lineup was one of them (Warning: Naughty language alert):
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Here is some trivia about that scene: It was not supposed to go down that way.
At all.
The guys came down with a juvenile case of the giggles while filming. It got so bad that during a break, director Bryan Singer told the cast they were “ruining” his movie.
Thankfully, he had a great editor in John Ottman who was able to take all of the cuts and put them together to make a great scene.
That’s the beauty of creativity and art. Some of your best stuff may come from something that was not planned.
As a photographer, I’ve had the good fortune to click at unexpected times and it works out so well.
Here are a few recent images:
Juhlya – Juhlya is one of the singers for our church worship team. This image was made backstage just before the Christmas Eve services. There was nothing wrong, but she still had this look of concern on her face. The light in the office was no very bring, but when she looked up the light hanging from the ceiling illuminated her face very well. When I pressed the shutter, it worked out. The image looked even better in black and white, evoking a 40’s Hollywood kind of look.
Sergio & Soraya – These two are friends of mine. I had a portrait special going for Christmas and they asked me to do photos for their family. Most of the time, I was getting good posed shots, but at one point, Sergio started making funny faces and doing goofy poses which led to genuine laughter and this image.
Greg & Denise – This image is of my Pastor, Greg Peters and his wife Denise. Our church has recently “adopted” Philadelphia as a city in the United States where we want to help reach the lost with the hope of Jesus. We were standing on the “Rocky” steps. I was facing the art museum and my wife told me to turn around. I saw Greg & Denise overlooking their adopted city and grabbed this shot.
The lesson here is to keep your options open when creating no matter what it is, and look for those moments that may at first seem to be nothing, but turn out to be great work.
Dave Anthold says
Jay – fantastic pictures. Love them. I totally understand what you are saying about capturing the “unexpected” moment. Here is a pic I took while on a mission trip in the Czech Republic this summer. I was taking some pics of other groups and she turned around, smiled, and I snapped the photo and then I went back to doing what I doing before.
I love this picture, mainly because it was unexpected. It’s always good to be in the right place at the right time :)!