Compromise. I hate compromise!

Usually I like the tough jobs because I’ll always do whatever it takes to get the shot, while the happy-snapper part-timers won’t even bother trying. But today, due to time constraints, I had to settle for run-of-the-mill scene-setting shots.

The story was about a glider that had crashed in a forest. By the time I reached the gliding club’s airstrip the rescue was over and the injured pilot had been airlifted to hospital. So there was no possibility for ‘action’ shots. Fortunately, though, the wreckage of the glider was still at the crash site. Unfortunately, reaching the crash site would require a 5-mile hike up and down several steep hills, with no paths, on my own, and with my heaviest lens.

For a while it looked like someone from the club was going to fly me over the crash site, but then that didn’t happen. So I donned hiking boots and gaiters, and prepared for the epic hike.

But a nagging thought was troubling me. As much as I wanted to get "the shot" of the crashed glider, as much for my own pride as anything else, I knew that the pilot hadn’t been seriously injured so there was a distinct possibility that the story would be dropped. And it was getting late, so it would be very late by the time I got back with the pictures. So I called both papers that I was doing the pictures for, explained the situation, and the decision was made that I wouldn’t go for the crash shot.

So it was an hour of photographing gliders taking off…

Gliders landing…

Gliders on the ground…

Gliders with big hills in the background…

Vaguely artistic shots with dramatic dead space, an attempt to show scale…

The gliding club sign with a hill in the background…

The gliding club sign with planes taking off…

And a shot of the hill that I’d have had to hike over, or around, to get to the crash scene…

Will the story even run in tomorrow’s papers? We’ll see. But this is the first job I’ve ever come away from without getting the killer shot. Doesn’t feel good, but it was the right decision.