Happy Accidents

Every photographer knows—or soon learns—the "tree growing out of the head" phenomenon. You have to be mindful of your backgrounds, because things can look connected that aren't. (I play with it from time to time...although I can't find it right now, I have a picture of my Uncle with a fish balanced on his head, and one in which a museumgoer appears to be wearing an American Indian headdress.)

Juan Buhler has a picture (although I can't find that either) in which a child's eye is just barely visible past her parent's sleeve, and the weird juxtaposition makes the picture. [UPDATE: here it is, although I misremembered it—it's his hand, not his sleeve. Hey, it's been a year since I last saw it! Thanks to Juan. —Mike]

The Washington Post published a fabulous example by John McDonnell the other day—a baseball player with three arms! That weird, diminutive, slightly fuzzy third arm seems magically to be filling out the back of right fielder Jayson Werth's shirt.

You couldn't make that happen if you wanted to. Funny.

We seldom talk about it, but sometimes what "makes" a picture is just the result of happenstance. How do you make these fortuitous happenings happen? Just get out with the camera and see what happens. You never know.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob Burnett)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis: "I always liked Michael Reichman's happy accident."

Mike replies: That's amazing! What a wonderful example of ghosting flare.

William Schneider: "I can put my fingers on my most cringe-worthy accidental background...

"I had just been hired to teach basic photography by the man in the photo. He had been a picture editor at National Geographic before entering academia. His Pulitzer-prize-winning wife, also a photography professor here, was hugging a friend in the picture.

"I cringed at the irony of being newly selected as faculty in a photography school, and then making the basic beginner's mistake of not watching the background.

"Thankfully my embarassment has subsided over the 18 years that have passed by."

Tom Kwas: "...I actually went through about a ten-year period in the '90s where I tried to get as many weird things with foreground and background compression as I could. People balancing Union 76 Balls on their head, people holding up their hand with someone standing on it, the Trans-America building in SFO looking like a witches hat on someone in a office nearby...amused myself doing this with my 'snaps,' but you'd be surprised how concentrating on this stuff for a few months, all of a sudden you're making far less mistakes with compression, and paying much more attention to detail!"

Marek Fogiel: "I like this one of mine."

Mike replies: Made me laugh.

Comments

[John King]

In the days when I was shooting 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film almost exclusively, I often shot a few rolls of 35mm without looking through the viewfinder. Call it hunting for happy accidents or a deliberate exercise in freeing up my compositional sense, that exercise often yielded a few very interesting frames.

[Michael Barkowski]

Indeed. I had already decided that your picture of the dog Stella is improved by the flowers on her head.

[Peter Van Rens]

A photo I took of a couple of players on my daughter's hockey team appears to be sharing the same pair of skates. In this case, it was only slightly amusing and did not make the image any better.

[Soeren Engelbrecht]

Aha - Zaphod Beeblebrox has apparently taken up baseball.

What I, personally, find intriguing by this picture is that, from this particular viewpoint, his second head is perfectly hidden by the bearded one, so the picture conveys the illusion that he actually only has one head. Nice catch.

[Bob Rosinsky]

A depth-of-field setback.

[Ken White]

Not as great image but a good example of a happy accident. This is a child dancer sitting on the floor after a performance.

http://www.pbase.com/kwhite/image/149325665

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Well, the most famous example of "tree head" would obviously have to be the John Paul Filo picture of the Kent State shootings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kent_State_massacre.jpg

It's a picture in which the odd and the tragic are joined, which caused so much cognitive dissonance that the pole was originally retouched for publication, although nowadays the photo is published in its original format.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

"Accidents" are for amateurs. For pros they're "inspired revelations". ;-}

[LJ Slater]

I realize you didn't put out a call for entries, but I have a flare example also:

[SerrArris]

Hi Mike!

Sometimes the look through the viewfinder resembles something one did not notice with pure eyes before, the mind clicks fast enough and the shutter, too:

On that occasion I tried to include the running man on the window in the final frame (after first noticing it after a failed shot). It took numerous photographs of people passing until I succeeded. But it worked out.

I.e., the happenings in the background may be forced. Nevertheless, they only fit seldomly.

Best regards,
Markus

[hugh crawford]

When I was about 7 I took a picture of two birds perched on top of a cow pasture fence, and there was a cow in the background that lined up next to the birds on the barbed wire. Of course the picture looked like a tiny cow and two mockingbirds perched on a fence, and I've spent the next 50 years in photography as a result.

Also it's not that hard to train yourself to make lots of photos like that, but once you do it's really hard to stop because it's all subconscious.

The print or the tiny cow went missing in a kitchen remodeling at my parents house, wish I still had it.

[Juan Buhler]

I had no idea what photo of mine you were talking about. I'm still not sure... Perhaps this one?

http://photoblog.jbuhler.com/toronto-2012-3/

Lots of weird juxtapositions in my photos, but this one is the one that both was accidental (the guy moved in front of the camera in a way I hadn't anticipated) and kind of matches your description.

[Sarge]

Here's a heading a coconut tree photo. It was taken with my camera, but I can't be blamed for it because I'm in the picture.

[Dave in NM]

When you're working quickly, there's often a very fine line between a happy accident and a decisive moment.

Who's to say which is which?

http://www.davereichertphoto.com/Early/Early-3/9337181_25cgbN#!i=2390974690&k=vsLpVww&lb=1&s=A

[Simon Griffee]

Reminds me of this.

[struan]

If you're going to photograph the daughter of the most powerful photography curator in the world, it's best to go all-in:

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/F/friedlander/friedlander_nina_szarkowski_full.html

[Dave]

Coincidentally this was posted today.

http://justinsutcliffe.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/impossible-project-px680-06-nov-2012.html

[Dave in NM]

Here's another one: from Burk Uzzle's 1973 book, "Landscapes".

"Sword, Flag, and Pole Practice"