Each of the pictures above was created without looking through the viewfinder of my camera.  You may have already heard about what many photographers like to call the “Hail Mary” photo attempt, where the camera is held above your head or in a position that you cannot normally reach.  I’m not the tallest guy so I tend to use this method quite a bit, unless I have a ladder in the back seat of my car.  These photos represent three different attempts at a “Hail Mary” using three different techniques.

In the first photo, I was looking for a quick feature in downtown Ferguson and found these city workers putting ribbons on the light poles.  The camera is on a monopod fully extended with the ten second self timer activated.  I pressed the shutter button on the camera and extended the monopod above my head while trying to guess where worker would be on the steps of the ladder, attempting to blindly frame the second worker between the legs of the ladder, all before the timed ten second shutter fired.  I was able to try this about fifteen times as they installed ribbons on three different poles before it all lined up.

The second photo of a worker laying stencils for painting the pavement in a parking lot was created by my toes and my arms.  Like I said, I’m not tall.  I’m standing on my toes with the camera fully extended above my head and pointed downward to clean up the background and hopefully get all of the letters in the frame before he moved them.  I only got off two frames before he moved the letters but one of them worked.

The third photo of a dock worker has nothing to do with me being short.  I actually could not get low enough to take this picture while also looking through the viewfinder.  The ground was dirty and wet, I was wearing khaki pants, and I had another assignment to go to after leaving the dock so I would not have time to change clothes.  So, when I saw the rope on the ground I did a few test frames to see where I needed to hold the camera and just waited for about ten minutes for the worker to walk through the frame.  I racked off about fifteen photos with the camera laying on the ground using the motor drive as he walked past me and one of them had the worker framed nicely.