When I was a young teen, I remember going to my first and only estate sale. It was such an odd feeling trudging around some dead dude’s garage, looking at his tools and things. Even now I think how strange it would be if, the week after I kicked off, there would be strangers pilfering my garage treasures. I bought two things from that estate sale; a 12v solar panel for keeping RV batteries charged up, and a very nice weather resistant 35mm Pentax film camera. Yes, this was back far enough that digital still cameras were 640×480 max res and very very expensive.
I had that camera for a very long time and took it with me almost all the time. The problem was, I took lots of photos and have boxes of old prints. This weekend I decided it was time to clear out these old photos and scan the ones I wanted to keep. While doing so, I came across “the luckiest shot in the world”… a photo I was so amazed at I didn’t believe it when I got the film developed.
I took this famous shot in 1997 while doing the dishes. I was renting a small apartment above a garage… kind of “Growing Pains” style. Doing the dishes by hand, I used a soapy scrubbing brush to clean everything. After cleaning out one of the mugs, I pulled the brush out in such a way that a bubble formed across the top of the mug. It was getting dark and the bubble looked really cool to me the way it was reflecting the light so I ran and got my Pentax to take a shot of it. I framed up and hit the shutter button, but when I looked up I saw that the bubble had already popped. I was kind of bummed out, until I got the film developed!
Look very closely at that photo! I caught the bubble just as it was bursting! You can see the center of it has collapsed! Now that’s what I call “the luckiest shot in the world”.
Tags: photography
